Immigrant rights advocates and members from San Francisco’s Japanese American community joined to condemn President Donald Trump’s invoking of a law that was last used during World War II to detain tens of thousands of people of Japanese ancestry.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, established 22 years after the United States gained independence, allows the president to expedite the removal of unnaturalized immigrants from nations at war with the U.S. It has been invoked several times in America’s history, but only during wartime.
Last Friday, Trump invoked the act to remove suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, or TdA. In January, Trump designated the gang as a foreign terrorist organization.
In a proclamation, Trump argued that the gang is invading the U.S., thus giving him the power to deport and detain alleged members of the gang without due process.
“I find and declare that TdA is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States,” the proclamation says.
A judge promptly blocked the proclamation and ordered the administration to stop the deportations of alleged TdA members, but planes carrying them had apparently already taken off. Many suspected TdA members have been sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
“Everyone deserves their day in court,” said San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju during Thursday’s news conference. “Some of the people who were essentially kidnapped by the U.S. government and shipped off to El Salvador in violation of a federal court order have pending civil court dates in order to obtain their immigration status.”
The Japanese American community spoke out on Thursday to stand in solidarity with the more than 200 Venezuelan migrants who have been detained or deported since the proclamation.
Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is a stark reminder of when 120,000 Japanese Americans, some of whom were U.S. citizens, were rounded up after the attack on Pearl Harbor and sent to live in internment camps after being designated as “alien enemies.”
We need to ensure that history does not repeat itself, yet here we are. Silence is not an option.
Jon Osaki, executive director of the Japanese Community Youth Council
“This is something that has a deep historical resonance to what Japanese American communities went through, to what my great grandfather went through when he experienced a knock on the door from the FBI shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was then branded an alien enemy and taken away from his family,” said Carl Takei of the Asian Law Caucus .
Some members of the Japanese American community in San Francisco like Satsuki Ina know all too well the potential dangers of the Alien Enemies Act being invoked. She showed the audience a photo of her father’s mugshot after he was declared an alien enemy.
Ina, who was born at the Tule Lake Segregation Center internment camp in Northern California, emphasized the importance of coming together in solidarity to stand by Venezuelan migrants.
“We are speaking up and showing up in ways where people feel empowered,” Ina said. “Today, we have knowledge, wisdom, strength in numbers, coalitions and alliances working together. We have grassroots movement going on. We are not the same.”
When Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, they felt that they had few allies coming to defend them. The reemergence of the Alien Enemies Act over 80 years later targeting another nationality cannot go on without resistance, said Jon Osaki, executive director of the Japanese Community Youth Council . The council is a Bay Area organization dedicated to youth development through providing programs like preschooling and college preparedness.
“We need to ensure that history does not repeat itself, yet here we are,” Osaki said. “Silence is not an option. We need to speak up loudly and make sure that those who are targeted in this country right now know that there are people who support them and are looking out for them.”
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