Congressman Sees Japanese Internment in Today’s Raids
WASHINGTON — Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) returned home last Fourth of July to startling stories from his Southern California district: immigration patrols sweeping through communities, a constituent telling him she had started carrying a passport to prove her right to be in the country. For most members of Congress, such reports would be deeply troubling. For Takano, they struck a distinctly personal chord.
His American-born parents were both incarcerated as infants during World War II — swept up in the forced relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066. Now, as President Donald Trump’s administration escalates what it calls the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, Takano is drawing explicit parallels between that dark chapter and the current moment, warning that the same arguments used to justify one grave injustice are being deployed to justify another.
A Family History of Incarceration
Takano’s father, William, was just 2 years old when his family was sent to the Tule Lake incarceration camp in California in 1942. His mother, Nancy Tsugiye Sakamoto, was 1 year old when she was relocated to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Both were American citizens by birth, yet they were labeled “enemy aliens” and deemed a danger to national security — the same language, Takano argues, that the current administration uses to justify mass detention of immigrants.
According to AP News, Takano’s grandfather Isao Takano immigrated from Hiroshima and built a farming business in Bellevue, Washington, only to see it all vanish when the family was forcibly removed. The story is one of thousands from that era, but for Takano, it is deeply personal.
“I do feel like there’s a similarity of circumstance of my own 2-year-old father and my 1-year-old mother being labeled as enemy aliens and they’re considered a danger to national security,” Takano told the Associated Press. “They’re put into these incarceration camps. Similar arguments have been made by this administration — that immigrants pose a grave danger to our country and it’s for the security of our country that we’re doing this.”
Alligator Alcatraz: A Modern Parallel
Takano has specifically focused on the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility in the Florida Everglades — officially the South Florida Detention Facility — which opened on July 3, 2025. Reports from inside the facility described overcrowding, beatings, worms in food, backed-up toilets, lack of natural light, and other inhumane conditions. A federal judge ordered it closed by the end of October 2025, and Florida now plans to shutter it by June 2026.
In a column for The Rafu Shimpo, Takano wrote: “There are distinctions between Japanese American incarceration of WWII and Alligator Alcatraz. But at its heart, there is not a wide gap between the two.”
“In both instances,” he continued, “the government claimed that violation of human rights en masse was and is justified because of emergency circumstances. In both cases, there was and is no vetting, due process, or writ of habeas corpus.”
Speaking on the House floor, Takano posed a haunting question: “Will Americans generations from now visit Alligator Alcatraz and think to themselves, ‘How could our government do this?’”
The Broader Immigration Crackdown
The current enforcement operations have intensified following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — U.S. citizens killed while protesting immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis. The White House recently changed leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, with new Secretary Markwayne Mullin promising to keep the department off the front pages. Yet conservative groups continue to pressure the administration to deport 1 million people per year, and congressional Republicans have provided billions in special enforcement funds.
The economic toll is also mounting. Research highlighted by Forbes found that ICE raids reduce consumer spending and disrupt local economies. Wharton professor Zeke Hernandez, who studied over 5,000 ICE raids, found that foot traffic falls 2.7% and spending declines 6.2% per location per week — translating to billions in lost economic activity.
A Precedent for Redress
Takano has also pointed to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed by President Ronald Reagan, which formally apologized for the “grave injustice” of Japanese American internment and provided $20,000 to each surviving detainee. His own parents received a letter of apology and payment. Now, he says, talks are underway among some in Congress for a similar redress for those affected by Trump’s immigration enforcement operations.
“Remarkably the country did come to realize the mistake,” Takano told the AP. “I believe we’re living through one of those eras of mistakes and I believe we can come out of this moment stronger.”
What History Will Judge
Takano, a former high school history teacher elected to Congress in 2012, is acutely aware of how future generations will view this period. “We look back on that era of history as a shameful one, as a time when our political leaders failed the Constitution, failed the American people,” he said of the Japanese American internment. The implication is clear: the same judgment may await the current era.
In his Rafu Shimpo column, Takano made an impassioned plea: “None of this is radical. It is the bare minimum in a democracy that claims to respect the rule of law. The last time our nation failed this test, my family paid the price. I will not be quiet while others are made to pay it again.”
As the Trump administration presses forward with its enforcement agenda, and as facilities like Alligator Alcatraz face closure under court order, the question Takano has placed before Congress and the country remains open: Will future generations look back at this moment and ask how it was allowed to happen?
“These future generations of Americans,” Takano said on the House floor, “will look to us, the Congress, to see what we did to try to stop it.”