Max Ebel escaped Nazi Germany after being attacked for refusing to join the Hitler Youth. Susumu Shimizu, a Japanese immigrant in Peru, was instrumental in managing a thriving family business in Lima. Neither Max nor Susumu had violated any laws or posed any threat to the United States. Despite this, the U.S. government detained these men for several years in World War II internment camps.
Their imprisonment was deemed acceptable under the , a law permitting the wartime detention and deportation of non-citizens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent without any proof of disloyalty. Over a million U.S. immigrants were affected by the law and subjected to numerous restrictions. As “enemy aliens,” immigrants like Max could face internment for the duration of the war. Moreover, like Susumu, thousands of Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants and citizens of Latin American countries were forcibly removed from their homes, sent to the United States, and then interned as “enemy aliens.” They suffered indefinite detention in the camps, and many were deported to war zones when used in prisoner exchanges.
We personally knew Max and Susumu and witnessed their suffering. They were our fathers. What they and other prisoners experienced in U.S. internment camps was a shameful period in our nation’s history. Yet, we now observe the U.S. government on the verge of repeating this injustice.
President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on March 15—disregarding its role in justifying the wrongful internment of Max, Susumu, and thousands of others during World War II. A federal judge blocked the order, although . Echoing the law’s disgraceful past, Trump stated he would use the law to target Venezuelan immigrants his administration labels as gang members, without any verified evidence or independent evaluation. Furthermore, his advisor Stephen Miller has suggested constructing to hold these immigrants while awaiting deportation. Trump’s “border czar” appointee Tom Homan advocated detaining immigrants’ U.S. citizen-children and deporting them with their parents, a measure that would mirror the application of the Alien Enemies Act .
Legal experts have criticized this proposed use of the Alien Enemies Act as unlawful. The law authorizes presidents to employ its summary detention and deportation powers only during declared wars or armed attacks by enemy nations. The Alien Enemies Act is a wartime measure, not a tool for presidents to address migration or even transnational criminal activity.
However, reviving the Alien Enemies Act would be more than a legal transgression. It would be a betrayal of American ideals to target individuals for detention and deportation without any evidence of wrongdoing and based primarily on their place of birth.
Our fathers are deceased, as are the vast majority of those interned under the Alien Enemies Act during World War II. They cannot speak out against this injustice, but we can and must.
We must not repeat this law’s devastating history of violating constitutional and human rights. Congress and past presidents have emphasized this in their official apologies to those interned under the Alien Enemies Act and . As President Bill Clinton stated when apologizing for the treatment of Japanese Americans, “We must learn from the past and dedicate ourselves as a nation to renewing the spirit of equality and our love of freedom.”
Now is the moment to uphold these values—the promise that the United States can learn from its errors to create a more perfect union. The promise of due process and equal justice under the law. The promise that all people are created equal and possess certain unalienable rights.
President Trump must cease implementing the Alien Enemies Act. Instead, he should seek out with former Alien Enemies Act internees and their families to comprehend the and this law has already inflicted.
Congress, for its part, should strive to repeal the Alien Enemies Act once and for all. We commend Senator Mazie Hirono and Representative Ilhan Omar for introducing a repeal bill in Congress. Dozens of groups representing former internees and their families, including our organizations, the German-American Internee Coalition and the Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project, have endorsed that legislation.
We acknowledge that addressing our immigration challenges requires effort. However, the only appropriate way for our leaders to approach the Alien Enemies Act today is by recognizing the fundamental injustice of wartime internment and expulsions and by working to repeal the law, not reviving it to devastate the lives of other immigrants who call this country home.