Portland JACL

The JACL denounces President Trump’s Executive Order expanding the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp to hold as many as 30,000 deported migrants. Guantanamo Bay has imprisoned hundreds of migrants intercepted at sea and more notoriously, suspected enemy combatants who were subjected to torture and denial of basic legal rights. Many who have been held at Guantanamo were never formally charged with a crime and were subject to “arbitrary detention” for years. 

The expansion of Guantanamo to hold tens of thousands of detainees is eerily evocative of a previous time in our nation’s history. Our country last employed mass incarceration of this scale during WWII when over 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry were imprisoned at concentration camps and detention centers across the country. That was also done in the name of “national security” and as it was discovered years later that the security threat was a falsified one, we similarly question the urgent threat to our national security. 

It is noteworthy that the expansion of the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay would be “a temporary transit … where we can plus-up thousands and tens of thousands, if necessary, to humanely move illegals out of our country, where they do not belong, back to the countries where they came from in a proper process.” We cannot help but draw parallels to how Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes to “temporary detention centers” for an unknown period of time before being transferred without their constitutional right of due process to more permanent incarceration camp sites deep in the American interior on desolate desserts, mountains, plains, and swamps. 

JACL demands that we not repeat the inhumanity of mass incarceration that has become part of our community’s experienced trauma. As so many Japanese Americans understand, the inhumanity and cruelty of what happened during WWII, enforced by our own government, should never be repeated again.

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The JACL is deeply alarmed and concerned by the Executive Orders issued by President Trump following his inauguration as our nation’s 47th President. These executive orders threaten to destroy decades of advances in civil liberties and civil rights. The Japanese American Citizens League is especially concerned with Executive Orders calling for the end of birthright citizenship, an escalation of the border crisis including the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, the overt discrimination towards LGBTQIA+ individuals, and the rollback of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility initiatives including the removal of key governmental programs meant to support marginalized communities and the perversion of Civil Rights laws to advance a white supremacist agenda. 

Much of the language and rhetoric within these orders hearken back to numerous times in our nation’s long-ago history, when our government openly discriminated against marginalized groups particularly our own Japanese American community, echoing all too eerily the months preceding and following Executive Order 9066. The declaration of a “national emergency” at our Southern border, with plans to use “detention centers” resulting in possibly “family separation” directly parallels the trumped-up threat of national security from Japanese Americans during WWII resulting in the mass incarceration of 125,000 people, who were never convicted of a crime or given due process protected under the law. Just as it was then, the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is being used with the fear of an overstated national security threat to remove fundamental legal protections for immigrants. 

During WWII, two-thirds of the 125,000 men, women, and children forcibly removed from the safety of their homes and incarcerated in American concentration camps were American citizens by birth under the 14th Amendment and affirmed by the Supreme Court Case US v. Wong Kim Ark. They gained this citizenship even as their parents were barred from naturalization due to the racist laws in place at the time. And while it may be a coincidence, the date on which this order would go into effect has even further meaning for Japanese Americans. The order states that it shall go into effect 30 days after its issuance, which falls on February 19th, 2025 — exactly 83 years to the day from the signing of Executive Order 9066 which paved the way for Japanese American incarceration.  

Following the indignity of our community’s incarceration, the JACL recognized the shared experience of discrimination and the need to work together as a nation to implement the instruments to overcome the impediments of structural racism. As we remember the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. this week, we recall the fight for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which remains the law of the land and continues to lift up the equal rights of protected communities. The administration’s efforts to dismantle Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility programs place it in direct opposition to these laws that all government employees are sworn to uphold, including the President. Dismantling programs like the White House Initiative on Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders only cripples the ability of the government to work effectively in our communities.

We especially recognize the ugly hatred directed at the transgender community. Revoking the recognition of transgender people on their federally issued documents will not erase them and pitting transgender people against women and false fears for our children will not be a winning strategy. This strategy failed years ago when it was employed against the broader gay and lesbian communities and it will fail again this time.

JACL opposes these executive orders and the attempts to dismantle generations of civil rights law. In a single day, our nation has once again regressed to a bygone era that engenders fear of communities of color, immigrants, and all those who don’t conform to some people’s view of what it means to be an American. These are not the true threats to our democracy and to our nation that these executive orders would lead us to believe. Our ancestors fought to bring an end to our discriminatory past, to ensure that future generations had a better chance in this nation. We must recognize that there is still much work to be done, that discrimination remains a part of our society, and that now is not the time to roll back our efforts to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans.

October 25, 2024

For Immediate Release

Seia Watanabe, VP Public Affairs, swatanabe@jacl.org

Matthew Weisbly, Education & Communications Coordinator, mweisbly@jacl.org

On Friday, October 25th, 2024, President Biden spoke at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona and offered an apology for the U.S. government’s past practice of forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families and transferring them to government-operated boarding schools.

As early as 1819 and lasting until the late 1960s, the United States government established and operated boarding schools to “civilize” Indigenous children – what we now recognize as a euphemism for an attempt at the systematic and deliberate destruction of the culture and society of Indigenous communities in the United States. These institutions are a lasting stain on American history and serve as only one of many examples of the mistreatment and bigotry that Indigenous communities have faced at the hands of our government.

Donna Cheung, Civil Rights Chair of the Arizona Chapter of the JACL commented; “From my perspective, a leader who acknowledges and rights a historical wrong reflects a strong, confident nation because such an admission reaffirms the moral centrality of the nation. The apology from a sitting U.S. President to First Nation communities is so significant because the U.S. was founded by displacing these communities. The existence of the U.S. is at a profound cost to Native Americans and that needs to be acknowledged also.”

The JACL recognizes that apologies from the U.S. government are a critical step in addressing discrimination and promoting the healing of generational trauma, which has been felt most poignantly by the Indigenous peoples of the United States. The JACL applauds this historic action by the Biden Administration and expresses our hope that this apology serves as just one step towards meaningful and long overdue restorative justice for the many Indigenous communities in the United States.

https://jacl.org/statements/jacl-commends-the-biden-administrations-apology-for-indigenous-boarding-schools

October 24, 2024

For Immediate Release

Seia Watanabe, VP Public Affairs, swatanabe@jacl.org

Matthew Weisbly, Education & Communications Coordinator, mweisbly@jacl.org

As a nearly century-old organization, the JACL has a long history of supporting the civil and human rights of all those targeted by injustice or hate. With this history in mind, and in accordance with Resolution 1, passed with an overwhelming majority at our 2024 national convention, we call for an end to the U.S. government’s funding of the Israeli military, where that aid enables the continued violation of international humanitarian laws, including the Geneva Conventions, and US law including the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 U.S.C. §2378-1. The Foreign Assistance Law expressly prohibits the assistance or the exportation of military weapons to countries that directly or indirectly restrict the transportation or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance. 

Israel’s persistent attacks on Hamas have severely impacted Gaza’s health, food, power, and other critical infrastructure, hindering aid efforts while increasing humanitarian needs. Nearly 300 aid workers have been killed since hostilities began in Gaza. Due to the high risk to personnel, many organizations have halted or reduced aid operations including the recent cessation of polio vaccination programs for children in the region. 

The implementation of a de facto “starve-or-leave” policy in northern Gaza is reprehensible and constitutes a clear violation of international law.

To comply with U.S. law and to alleviate the immense suffering in Gaza, the JACL calls on President Biden to end the U.S. government’s military support to Israel that enables state actions in violation of established international conventions. We support the President’s recent indications of his willingness to use such pressure on the Israeli government to end the blockade of humanitarian aid to the region, as well as the efforts of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to broker a peace settlement that must include the return of all hostages.

https://jacl.org/statements/jacl-calls-on-white-house-to-end-funding-of-israels-military-and-human-rights-violations