The opening image of the song is rotting fruit:

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;

Here at the end, Gurthrie circles back to that rot, though this time as a metaphor for the loss of life in the plane crash and immigration policies more broadly.

Perhaps a subtle play on planes/plain, emphasizing that the problem here is not only in the treatment of these particular workers lost in this particular crash, but a broader issue surrounding the treatment of Mexican migrant workers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay4AEpEynuc

Springsteen at times in performance literalizes the word “plane” though not on his album version.

The intimate use of Spanish names here contrasts coverage of the crash that omitted the names of the Mexican migrant workers, calling them only deportees.

Listed here below are the 28 Mexican victims of the crash:

Miguel Negrete Alvarez
Francisco Llamas Durán
Santiago Garcia Elizondo
Rosalio Padilla Estrada
Tomás Aviña de Gracia
Bernabé López Garcia
Salvador Sandoval Hernández
Severo Medina Lara
Elias Trujillo Macias
José Rodriguez Macias
Tomás Padilla Márquez
Luis López Medina
Manuel Calderón Merino
Luis Cuevas Miranda
Martin Razo Navarro
Ignacio Pérez Navarro
Román Ochoa Ochoa
Ramón Ramirez Paredes
Apolonio Ramirez Placencia
Guadalupe Lara Ramirez
Alberto Carlos Raygoza
Guadalupe Hernández Rodriguez
Maria Santana Rodriguez
Juan Valenzuela Ruiz
Wenceslao Flores Ruiz
José Valdivia Sánchez
Jesús Meza Santos
Baldomero Marcas Torres

Members of the crew:
Francis “Frank” Atkinson, Long Beach, Pilot
Marion Harlow Ewing, Balboa, Co-Pilot
Lillian “Bobbie” Atkinson, Long Beach, Stewardess
Frank E. Chaffin, Berkeley, Immigration Guard

Guthrie was supposedly inspired to write this protest song after reading coverage of the tragic crash in The New York Times. The story only mentioned the names of the 4 American victims of the accident, not the 28 Mexican migrant workers who were also killed.

Aside from not honoring the dead by name, the choice of the word “deportee” does not acknowledge that these workers were part of an official government program and in the US by invitation, contributing the to American economy.

Guthrie offers a succinct account of tragic ironies of the Bracero program and Mexican immigration history in the US in general. The bracero (“manual labor”) program allowed Mexican workers across the border for a fixed period of time to make up for labor shortages during WWII.

Then, as today, demand for work and for workers drives immigration despite “tough” legislation and deportation.