• In seeking to deport Venezuelan immigrants, President Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act — the same law that was used to justify incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II.

Kay Ochi’s parents were 21 and 22 years old when they were forced to leave San Diego, where they were born, and taken to an incarceration camp in the desert of Poston, Arizona, simply because of their Japanese heritage.

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The history of how the U.S. incarcerated more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent — most of them U.S. citizens like Ochi’s parents — during World War II is well-documented in museums and archives. It’s a memory that still shapes the identity of generations of Japanese Americans today and is a widely recognized example of how one group of people’s civil rights were ignored and violated.

But now civil rights activists and historians feel they are witnessing a flashback to history as President Donald Trump has invoked the same 227-year-old U.S. law that was used to justify incarcerating the Japanese American community during wartime.

“With the way the administration has gone forward with the executive orders, a lot of things seem to be able to happen again,” said Susan Hasegawa, a local historian of Japanese American history and a professor at San Diego City College.

The Alien Enemies Act, enacted in 1798 when the U.S. was on the brink of war with France, allows the president to detain or deport any “aliens” he considers “dangerous to the peace and safety” of the country.

U.S. presidents have invoked the law only three times before — during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II, when it was used to incarcerate people of Japanese, German and Italian descent.

Trump has been invoking the act to justify detaining, deporting and revoking visas for growing numbers of immigrants, largely Venezuelans that his administration has sent, without charges, to a notorious El Salvador prison.

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Civil rights advocates and others have described Trump’s moves as alarming violations of civil rights, including the right to due process.

The danger of the Alien Enemies Act is that it enables such violations, “under the guise of national security,” said Michael Kurima, the co-president of the board of the San Diego chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League.

He noted that the last time the law was invoked, about two-thirds of the people it was used to incarcerate were U.S. citizens.

“If the Alien Enemies Act is only a first step, then government suppression of dissent could be next,” Kurima said. “What begins with purported gang members from abroad could easily expand to include others — even American citizens — when civil liberties are treated as conditional.”

Critics have also noted that Trump is the only president in history to invoke the act when it’s not wartime as declared by Congress. He has repeatedly referred to unauthorized immigration as an “invasion.”

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Source: Kristen Taketa, dailynews.com/2025/04/13/able-to-happen-again-local-japanese-american-historians-warn-of-trumps-use-of-1798-wartime-law/