Japanese American groups criticized the construction of a new immigrant detention center in Texas at a military base that was used during World War II to imprison people of Japanese descent.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center at Fort Bliss in El Paso, which opened this past weekend, will be able to hold as many as 5,000 detainees upon its completion in the coming months, making it the largest federal detention center in U.S. history. Japanese American advocates, however, say that the facility, which once imprisoned people considered “enemy aliens,” is a chilling reminder of a dark past.
“The use of national security rhetoric to justify mass incarceration today echoes the same logic that led to their forced removal and incarceration,” said Ann Burroughs, president and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
“It is inconceivable that the United States is once again building concentration camps, denying the lessons learned 80 years ago.”
The Trump administration hit back at the comparisons made between the use of the base during World War II and the current immigration climate, including those from the American Civil Liberties Union, which described the facility as “another shameful chapter in Fort Bliss’ history.”
“Comparisons of illegal alien detention centers to internment camps used during World War II are deranged and lazy,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “The facts are ICE is targeting the worst of the worst—including murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, and rapists.”
The sprawling detention center, which cost roughly $1.2 billion to build, currently has the capacity to hold an estimated 1,000 people. More than 80 years ago, the base was an official U.S. Army facility that was used as a temporary internment camp, holding nationals from Japan, Germany and Italy, said Derrek Tomine, president of the National Japanese American Historical Society.
The square facility contained two compounds, surrounded by barbed wire fences, Tomine said. Armed guard towers sat at the corners. Many of the people of Japanese descent, in addition to other immigrants who were detained there, were awaiting their hearing before an enemy alien hearing board, Tomine said.
“Generally those held at the U.S. Army facilities were first-generation Japanese Americans detained early in World War II and who were then processed and shipped to other internment camps,” Tomine said.
Both Tomine and Burroughs said that the comparisons between the immigrant detention facility of the present and the internment camp of the past are “neither deranged nor lazy.”
“Entire communities, over 125,000 Japanese Americans, were forcibly removed from the West Coast in 1942 and today our immigrant brothers and sisters face the terror of ICE and CBP raids across the country,” Burroughs said. “It was a miscarriage of justice then, and it is a miscarriage of justice now.”
Tomine said he thinks the way that immigrants are being blamed for taking jobs, abusing government services and being the source of a host of societal issues smacks of the scapegoating of marginalized communities in the past, including during World War II.
“Many of these same immigrants fled their home countries to avoid being taken away and placed into camps without charges or due process,” Tomine said of the recent detentions.
Though the administration said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been prioritizing the targeting of criminals, roughly 70% of the estimated 59,380 people held in ICE detention as of Aug. 10 have no criminal conviction, according to data collected by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, an independent, nonpartisan data research organization. Texas, where Fort Bliss is located, is the state that has housed the most people during fiscal year 2025.
Fort Bliss has been the center of widespread criticism, particularly in the local El Paso community. McLaughlin previously said in a statement that the facility will offer legal representation, a law library, access to visitation, medical treatment and recreational space. However, Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, who toured the facility Monday, criticized the massive amount of funding approved for the site, in addition to major concerns over the conditions in the center, which is being run by private contractors.
“I think it’s far too easy for standards to slip when there are private facilities,” Escobar said during a news conference Monday. “I think private facilities far too frequently are operating with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”
Many, including the ACLU, also brought up the facility’s past as an intake shelter that housed almost 5,000 migrant children at its peak. Audio from 2021 revealed allegations of sexual misconduct by staff toward minors, in addition to a lack of clean clothing and other concerns.
Tomine said the hasty opening of the detention center at Fort Bliss and others across the country are proof that perhaps the U.S. has failed to learn lessons from the treatment of immigrants and Japanese Americans during World War II.
“Many in the Japanese American community … encourage the administration to not brush aside civil rights because of racism, rumors, hysteria and propaganda,” Tomine said.
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