In December 1941, my great-great grandfather, Sawaichi Fujita, a 58-year-old tinsmith who had lived in Hawaii for 36 years, was torn away from his family, marking the first of his 1,432 days incarcerated by the U.S. government. Invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the internment of him and thousands of others based on their ancestry. When he finally returned home after World War II, my grandfather said he was never the same.
Soon after he was wrongfully jailed, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of all people deemed a threat to national security. As a result, men, women and children of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes. Between 1941 and 1945, the United States forcibly incarcerated more than 125,000 people of Japanese descent. In 1983, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians determined that their incarceration was caused by “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”
Four decades later, the commission’s findings are more relevant than ever.
On Day 1 of his second administration, President Trump ordered the State and Homeland Security Departments to prepare for him to put into effect the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — the same law used to intern my great-great grandfather and 31,000 other noncitizens of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War II. When he invoked the archaic wartime authority on March 15, Trump sought to target members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang.
In reality, judges, lawyers and journalists have found that the administration used the act to disappear immigrants to a maximum-security mega-prison in El Salvador with little if any evidence of gang membership or criminal history. The majority have no criminal records and some were in the middle of asylum case proceedings. Mere tattoos, including an autism awareness ribbon and the words “mom” and “dad” beside crowns, were used to justify some removals.
The Trump administration’s actions have upended human rights and basic due process. Immigrants are being held incommunicado, unable to contact their families or access lawyers. Alone and terrified, they do not know how long they will be held in detention after being taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or where they are being sent when boarded onto a plane in chains.
Trump’s executive orders declaring an “invasion,” barring refugees from seeking safety, and getting rid of the few legal migration pathways available have laid the groundwork for mass raids and deportations across the country of longtime residents and newcomers alike. To defend these illegal and cruel actions, Trump and top White House officials are falsely conflating all immigrants with criminality and threats to the country. This is the same kind of rhetoric that motivated our national stain of internment.
Meanwhile, Congress has put forward a budget resolution that cuts food assistance and health care to build more border walls and detention centers. If passed, ICE will have billions of dollars more to arrest our loved ones, neighbors and coworkers at job sites, schools, places of worship and their homes. Far too many are mothers and fathers who pose no risk to public safety but are nevertheless considered a threat and a “criminal.” These arrests are eerily parallel to the FBI rounding up Japanese, German and Italian community leaders after Pearl Harbor.
During World War II, the United States used the Alien Enemies Act and Executive Order 9066 to undercut civil rights and imprison innocent people and families in squalid camps. Using the Alien Enemies Act today to usurp our existing immigration laws and scapegoat immigrants repeats this shameful chapter. Congress should pass the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, which would finally repeal the Alien Enemies Act and prevent its abuse to target immigrants and deport them without basic due process.
Politicians are once again sowing fear and xenophobia under the guise of national security. For the memory of my great-great-grandfather Sawaichi Fujita, and the thousands more that suffered this indignity 80 years ago, we must urgently act to stop repeating one of the darkest episodes in U.S. history.
Kimiko Hirota is the associate director of policy at Church World Service.