The Japanese American Citizens League is condemning the use of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to imprison up to 30,000 deported immigrants.
In a statement sent to AsAmNews, the JACL compared detaining undocumented immigrants at Guantanamo Bay to holding 125,000 Japanese Americans during WWII in concentration camps.
“That was also done in the name of “national security” and as it was discovered years later that the security threat was a falsified one, we similarly question the urgent threat to our national security,” JACL said in its statement.
On Sunday, a federal court stopped the detention of three Venezuelans at Guantanamo after their attorneys argued their legal rights and access to lawyers remains unclear.
The judge’s order is temporary pending a hearing.
14 civil liberty groups wrote homeland security requesting more information about those imprisoned at Guantanamo and their status, reported AA News Broadcast System.
“The Constitution, and federal and international law prohibit the government from using Guantánamo as a legal black hole,” they wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Civil rights attorney Elizabeth Fujiwara recently testified in support of a bill to ban the use of public lands for immigration prison camps.
During an interview on National Public Radio, civil rights attorney Elizabeth Fujiwara talked about what Japanese Americans experienced during WWII.
“I can’t even imagine what it was like to be totally humiliated every single day,” she said. “For four years to have military police have their rifles pointing at you and in fact in Manzanar there was resistance by the residents of the internment camp and the army shot 11 of them and they killed two. So this is not a Boy Scout camp. You do the wrong thing and you’re dead. And I think that’s the stress and the humiliation from that is unbelievable. How do you even survive?”
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The JACL is making a serious mistake by equating legal Japanese Americans to illegal immigrants who knowingly entered illegally and have broken other laws. It seems ok to now conflate illegal immigration with legal immigration. As a naturalized American born in Taiwan , I went thru the legal process to become a citizen. I never broke the laws and understand the Constitution. Linking yourself to illegal immigrants , well you might as well join the criminals in prison. This misplaced sympathy only puts the JACL into a category that is easy to denounce: criminal sympathizers. Just like the illegals who fly the Mexican or Guatamala flags while in the USA, they show disloyalty and have dug their own graves.
Legal immigrants are also being swept up by ICE and detained, some even deported. The “illegal” part is just a ploy. repealing the 14th Amendment is what they want to do!