‘History repeating itself:’ Japanese Americans, immigrants condemn Trump’s use of 18th century law ...Middle East

“Never again,” Japanese Americans and immigrant rights activists proclaimed in L.A.’s Little Tokyo this week.

The community is among many denouncing the Trump administration’s latest immigration move: invoking a centuries-old act that, if enacted, would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation during wartime. Advocates worry the move is part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda and could lead to the targeting of more immigrant groups and communities of color, regardless of criminal history.

“We must not scapegoat and criminalize entire communities of immigrants and people of color. …  All immigrants deserve just treatment under the law,” said Hope Nakamura, an organizer with the Little Tokyo-based Nikkei Progressives. Nakamura joined community members at a Tuesday, March 18 press conference, held in front of the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, to condemn the act.

“Immigrants have helped build this country and contribute daily not just to our economy, but to the society at large. They are our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors and our family members.”

Jasmin Ramirez holds a photo of her son, Angelo Escalona, at a government-organized rally protesting the deportation of alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, who were transferred to an El Salvador prison, in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Ramirez said she hadn’t heard from her son since he called to say he was with a group of migrants about to be deported on March 14. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

In this photo provided by El Salvador’s presidential press guards, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)

Hope Nakamura, an organizer with Nikkei Progressives, speaks at a press conference on March 18, 2025 in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, to condemn President Donald Trump’s recent invocation of the wartime “Alien Enemies Act.” The move would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation. (Courtesy of Sherrill Ingalls / Japanese American National Museum)

Kenyon Mayeda, chief impact officer of the Japanese American National Museum, speaks at a press conference on March 18, 2025 in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, to condemn President Donald Trump’s recent invocation of the wartime “Alien Enemies Act.” The move would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation. (Courtesy of Sherrill Ingalls / Japanese American National Museum)

Attendees at a press conference on March 18, 2025 in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, condemning President Donald Trump’s recent invocation of the wartime “Alien Enemies Act.” The move would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation. (Courtesy of Nikkei Progressives)

Kyoko Oda, a former incarceree of the Tule Lake Segregation Center and now president of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition, speaks at a press conference on March 18, 2025 in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, to condemn President Donald Trump’s recent invocation of the wartime “Alien Enemies Act.” The move would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation. (Courtesy of Sherrill Ingalls / Japanese American National Museum)

Lizbeth Abeln, the deputy director at the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice in San Bernardino, speaks at a press conference on March 18, 2025 in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, to condemn President Donald Trump’s recent invocation of the wartime “Alien Enemies Act.” The move would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation. (Courtesy of Nikkei Progressives)

Hope Nakamura, an organizer with Nikkei Progressives, speaks at a press conference on March 18, 2025 in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, to condemn President Donald Trump’s recent invocation of the wartime “Alien Enemies Act.” The move would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation. (Courtesy of Nikkei Progressives)

Bruce Embrey, an organizer with Nikkei Progressives, speaks at a press conference on March 18, 2025 in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, to condemn President Donald Trump’s recent invocation of the wartime “Alien Enemies Act.” The move would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation. (Courtesy of Sherrill Ingalls / Japanese American National Museum)

Abigail Chun with Nikkei Progressives, speaks at a press conference on March 18, 2025 in Little Tokyo Los Angeles, to condemn President Donald Trump’s recent invocation of the wartime “Alien Enemies Act.” The move would allow the U.S. president to speedily detain and deport noncitizens considered part of an enemy nation. (Courtesy of Nikkei Progressives)

Jasmin Ramirez holds a photo of her son, Angelo Escalona, at a government-organized rally protesting the deportation of alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, who were transferred to an El Salvador prison, in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Ramirez said she hadn’t heard from her son since he called to say he was with a group of migrants about to be deported on March 14. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

On March 15, Trump signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for the first time since World War II. He said the measure is targeted toward suspected members of a violent Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. recently designated a foreign terrorist organization. The rarely used 1798 law was created to give the president wider powers to deport any noncitizen from a country the U.S. is at war with, without trial.

Though the U.S. is not formally at war, Trump argued that “this was a time of war” and an “invasion” of migrants and criminals – referring to those members of Tren de Aragua that are “perpetrating, attempting and threatening an invasion” in the U.S.

An ongoing legal showdown and a federal judge’s restraining order temporarily blocks deportations stemming from the act. But shortly after Trump’s proclamation, reports emerged of hundreds deported to El Salvador and Honduras. And on March 21, reports of the first arrest of a suspected Tren de Aragua member emerged under the act.

First used during the War of 1812, the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), the last part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, has been used just three times during conflicts – including World War II, when it was rationalized to detain thousands of people of German, Italian and mostly Japanese descent in internment camps, then called “relocation centers” within the country.

The U.S. has since apologized, but many legal experts have argued the government used this act to target noncitizen groups solely based on their identity.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Nakamura joined with other community organizers across Southern California, including survivors of the Japanese American incarceration camps in the 1940s and their descendants, to call on the Trump administration to stand down.

“The Trump administration has launched an all-out assault, not only on immigrants, but on communities of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, working people, students and others,” Nakamura said on behalf of Nikkei Progressives. “Recent erasures of our community stories from government websites and documents… and the complete dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs are literally turning back the clock by several decades.”

Attendees also echoed calls for Congress to pass the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, first introduced in the House in 2023, which would repeal the AEA in its entirety. That legislation — co-sponsored by a number of congressional representatives including Judy Chu (CA-28), Mark Takano (CA-39) and Juan Vargas (CA-52) — was reintroduced at the beginning of the year, two days after Trump took office.

Trump – who has long pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants through sweeping policies, many of which are already being enforced – has said he would invoke the AEA since his campaigning days, and more recently during his joint address to Congress on March 4.

While Trump and supporters firmly believe the act stems from national security interests and the removal of potential criminals, many worry the move is rooted in racial prejudices or hysteria, not out of valid safety concerns.

Professor and immigration lawyer Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy, said the wartime act “justifies deportation” and is a way of bypassing due process of law, though its actual use remains somewhat unclear.

“The administration has said nothing concrete about how they label people as subject to the AEA, but from their rhetoric it appears they are trying to use it to jail and deport people without providing the basic due process protections the Constitution provides for people facing deportation,” Arulanantham said.

He noted that some of those targeted for deportation to El Salvador last weekend did not have an immigration hearing, including one of the center’s clients who “narrowly escaped being put on the plane.”

“If the government can use the AEA to summarily jail and deport people based only on untested accusations that they have ties to a gang, with no further process, it could serve as a tool for all sorts of human rights abuses,” Arulanantham said. “It could be used to target people based on their race, based on their political associations, and for various other reasons that should be constitutionally protected.”

Which is why many immigrant community members fear the worst.

An enemy alien identification card of Frances Corsentino, who lived in Los Angeles. During WWII, around 600,000 undocumented Italians were declared an enemy alien. (Courtesy the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles.)

A parole document for Filippo Fordellone, 1943. During WWII, around 600,000 undocumented Italians were declared an enemy alien. (Courtesy of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles collection.)

An enemy alien identification card of Frances Corsentino, who lived in Los Angeles. During WWII, around 600,000 undocumented Italians were declared an enemy alien. (Courtesy the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles.)

Marianna Gatto, executive director and co-founder of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles, said that around 600,000 Italians and Italian Americans, many of whom were naturalized citizens and elderly who lived in the U.S. for decades, were rounded up in internment camps during the war. Men 14 and older had to be registered with the government, fingerprinted and issued “enemy alien” ID cards.

The signaling out led to many Italian families distancing themselves from their roots and languages for many years, Gatto said in a phone call.

“Whenever we group people together, paint them with a broad brush without looking at their backgrounds, it can be very dangerous,” Gatto said. “We are a country that has not been studying or preserving its history – that in itself is very problematic.”

Bruce Embrey is the co-chair of the Manzanar Committee, which organizes free annual pilgrimages to the Manzanar National Historic Site, one of the preserved Japanese American internment camps in Inyo County. He called Trump’s AEA proclamation “outdated and draconian,” “undemocratic” and a “dangerous escalation of the administration’s attacks on civil liberties.”

“It’s important to remember before forcibly removing our families, our government and the media whipped up racist and xenophobic hysteria to demonize our community,” Embrey said at the Nikkei Progressives press conference.

Kenyon Mayeda, chief impact officer of the Japanese American National Museum, called the invocation “an alarming overreach of executive power.” He said the presser’s location – by the corner of 1st Street and Central Avenue in Little Tokyo – was strategic.

“This was where Japanese Americans boarded buses to be taken to (the internment) camp,” Mayeda said. “This place serves as a reminder of the dark chapter that remains one of the most egregious violations of civil rights in American history, later condemned by Congress and acknowledged as a grave mistake. We must not repeat it.”

Related links

Lizbeth Abeln, deputy director at the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice in San Bernardino, was “disheartened” by the AEA’s language, and encouraged immigrants to keep telling their stories.

“Once again, history is repeating itself. We do not stand with (Trump’s) actions. We stand in solidarity with the millions of migrant families, undocumented and documented; we want to see an end to immigrant incarceration, to the separation of families, to this violence being experienced in the Inland Empire and all over the U.S.,” Abeln said. “The Trump administration wants to paint a picture of criminalization (and) of dehumanization, and we need to keep our stories alive.”

Staff writer Victoria Ivie, CNN and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( ‘History repeating itself:’ Japanese Americans, immigrants condemn Trump’s use of 18th century law )

Also on site :

• Metal Ions: The Next Frontier in Diabetes Management?
• Starmer to send failed asylum seekers abroad - a year after Rwanda scheme scrapped
• Syrian leader says lifting of US sanctions 'historic and courageous'