{"id":40459,"date":"2025-03-21T11:53:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T18:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=40459"},"modified":"2025-03-21T11:53:32","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T18:53:32","slug":"trumps-targeting-of-venezuelans-echoes-japanese-internment-advocates-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2025\/03\/21\/trumps-targeting-of-venezuelans-echoes-japanese-internment-advocates-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s targeting of Venezuelans echoes Japanese internment, advocates say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A by\u00a0XUEER LU<\/a><\/strong> MARCH 20, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two
Satsuka Ina speaking of her lived experience of the internment. Photo by Xueer Lu. March 20, 2025.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Comic<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Read Mission Local often?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Help grow our newsroom<\/strong>, joining the hundreds of San Franciscans who support us by giving below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donate today!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Days after President Trump used the the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport some 200 Venezuelans to prisons in El Salvador \u2014 in defiance of a federal court order<\/a> \u2014 Japanese-Americans and allies rallied in support of the deportees at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center, reminding attendees of the law\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The act \u201cled to the removal of Japanese immigrants who had been living here for decades,\u201d said Satsuka Ina, who was born at the Tule Lake Segregation Center<\/a>, an internment camp in Northern California, and remembers growing up around barbed wire and guard towers. That history, she and others said, was repeating itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1942, 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes and incarcerated after President Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked the act due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mission<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter<\/strong> below.Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carl Takei, a criminal justice reform program manager at the legal aid and civil rights organization Asian Law Caucus, spoke of how his great grandfather heard a knock on his door from FBI agents shortly after Pearl Harbor. He was declared an alien enemy, and taken away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is an effort to silence dissent and disappear our community members without any semblance of due process, without any hearings,and to pack them up and take them away to these faraway prisons,\u201d Takei said, standing alongside seven speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Speakers at the press conference at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California at 1840 Sutter St. Photo by Xueer Lu. March 20, 2025.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ina, who experienced the internment firsthand, said the act caused the \u201cremoval of not just Japanese immigrants, but what the government called non-aliens, which are American citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On March 15, the Trump administration justified its invocation of the act by declaring the \u201cinvasion of the United States by Tren de Aragua,\u201d a prison-born Venezuelan gang. The administration has claimed that the deportees were gang members<\/a>, but lawyers for those deported have said that their clients were singled out for their tattoos and have gathered testimony<\/a> from deportees denying gang affiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judge James E. Boasberg ruled on March 15 that the Trump administration cannot use the wartime Alien Enemies Act \u2014 a 1798 law \u2014 to deport people without a hearing, and in increasingly frustrated missives has asked administration attorneys why they did not comply<\/a> with his orders to turn around the deportation flights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scholars of authoritarianism have warned<\/a> that Trump\u2019s dismissal of judicial rulings is driving the United States towards a crisis far faster than other 21st century autocracies. Until Feb. 1, many Venezuelans automatically qualified for \u201ctemporary protected status\u201d<\/a> because the political and environmental conditions in Venezuela are considered so dangerous.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone deserves their day in court. Everyone,\u201d San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said at Thursday\u2019s press conference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Mano Raju speaking at the press conference. Photo by Xueer Lu. March 20, 2025.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Raju said some of the deportees have \u201cpending civil court dates in order to obtain their immigration status. Deportees who are currently in the El Salvadoran prisons, he added, did not have the chance to present evidence. \u201cWhen those fundamental due process rights are violated for the most vulnerable,\u201d Raju said. \u201cIt\u2019s not long between those before those rights are eroded for everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raju also called for a \u201cmassive, nationwide, aggressive, peaceful and nonviolent resistance\u201d against the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. \u201cToday, as witnesses to these gross human rights violations, we will not be complicit,\u201d Raju added. \u201cWe will not relent until those rights are restored.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similar actions have led to widespread resistance in the past. In 2017, when the Trump administration banned citizens of mostly Muslim countries from entering the United States for the next three months, and officials detained several legal permanent U.S. residents \u2014 or green card holders \u2014 who were traveling when the ban was announced, protests broke out at airports across the country<\/a> and several detainees were released.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annie Lee, who works at the advocacy groups Chinese for Affirmative Action and Stop AAPI Hate, said it is \u201csimply unjust to take people from their homes and boot them out of the country.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Three
Annie Lee speaking at the press conference. Photo by Xueer Lu. March 20, 2025.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLike Martin Luther King Jr. said, \u2018Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,\u2019\u201d Lee added. \u201cToday they are coming after Venezuelans. Tomorrow they will come after other people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is not a Japantown problem or a Japanese problem,\u201d said Dean Ito-Taylor, the executive director of the Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach. \u201cThis is an American problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Support the Mission Local team<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We’re a small,\u00a0independent, nonprofit newsroom<\/strong>\u00a0that works hard to bring you news you can’t get elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

XUEER LU<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

xueer@missionlocal.com<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xueer is a California Local News Fellow,<\/a> working on data and covering housing. Xueer is a bilingual multimedia journalist fluent in Chinese and English and is passionate about data, graphics, and innovative ways of storytelling. Xueer graduated from UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism with a Master’s Degree in May 2023. She also loves cooking, photography, and scuba diving.More by Xueer Lu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0XUEER LU MARCH 20, 2025 (MissionLocal.org) Read Mission Local often? Help grow our newsroom, joining the hundreds of San Franciscans who support us by giving below. Donate today! Days after President Trump used the the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport some 200 Venezuelans to prisons in El Salvador \u2014 in defiance… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40460,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40459\/revisions\/40460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}