Déjà vu: ICE detention centers and WWII American concentration camps

A news article from Reuters, February 2, headlines, “ICE to Spend $38.3 Billion On Detention Centers Across the US.” $38 billion is a lot of beds. Have we been here before? The plan to build large-scale ICE detention centers reminds me of those concentration camps the U.S. built to detain Japanese Americans during the 2nd World War (WWII).

Eighty-four years ago this week, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order (EO) 9066, ordering the relocation of Americans of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps for national security reasons. In the six months that followed EO 9066, Japanese Americans, especially those living along the West Coast, were forcibly relocated into concentration camps hastily built at various locations within the western region of the United States. Major camps were established in desolate locations, notably Manzanar and Tule Lake in California; Poston and Gila River in Arizona; Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas; Minidoka in Idaho; and Topaz, Heart Mountain, and Amache in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado, respectively. Roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in these camps.

For ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), Reuters notes that “the detention centers will be paid for with funds from the massive spending package the Republican-controlled Congress passed in July 2025. That package, known as the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ included an unprecedented $170 billion for immigration enforcement, with $45 billion earmarked for detention.” The 2024 fiscal year budget designated only $3.4 billion for immigration detention. $45 billion is a 13-fold increase.

Various reports note that ICE is rapidly expanding detention capacity to 100,000 beds within its many detention centers. It is converting warehouses into mass detention centers in Texas, Georgia, New York, and other locations. In Texas, a large, multi-building facility is under construction with a capacity of up to 8,500 beds. Sites in Social Circle, GA, and Chester, NY are being established. Florida hosts the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades.

Among these are “mega” centers in El Paso, where Camp East Montana is being expanded with tent structures; Hutchins, near Dallas, is being expanded to accommodate 9,500 detainees. In Clint, El Paso County, DHS recently acquired warehouses for $123 million to establish a mega-center. In Florida, aside from the recently opened Alligator Alcatraz, a high-capacity site named “The Everglades” is planned. Warehouse conversions are underway or planned in Surprise, Arizona; Washington County, Maryland; Berks County, Pennsylvania; and Romulus, Michigan.

These construction projects are being opposed by local communities. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock has filed an amendment to block funding for Oakwood and Social Circle ICE detention centers, citing opposition from his constituents.

American WWII concentration camps under Executive Order 9066 were maintained from 1942 to 1946, leaving an indelible mark on the lives of over 120,000 Japanese Americans. During their years of incarceration, they were denied the right to vote. They lived behind barbed-wire enclosures, with guards posted 24/7. Despite this, many Japanese American men enlisted and were assigned to Army Battalion 442, one of the most highly decorated combat units of WWII.

Their forced removal and incarceration were disruptive. Imprisonment meant losing their freedom, careers, and, for many, their lifelong savings. Families lost property, jobs, access to schools, necessary health services, etc. They lost personal belongings, homes, farms, and businesses. Many properties were abandoned, and many were lost forever to tax delinquency or theft. Losses also extended to culture and community due to familial disruption, loss of heirlooms, and the destruction of community structures. These economic losses are estimated in the billions (in current value).

The least measurable, and most invisible loss, was the loss of face resulting from their incarceration. For decades, those who experienced the camps refused to talk about their experience, somehow taking their detention as a mark of disloyalty to the United States. But the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which resulted in the passage of civil rights legislation, encouraged the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) to initiate a campaign for redress and reparations for detainees.

In 1980, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) was formed to examine the internment camps. Three years later, the CWRIC published its findings in a report titled Personal Justice Denied, where the Commission concluded that the forced relocation and internment of persons of Japanese ancestry under EO 9066 had not been justified by military necessity, and that Executive Order 9066 was based on “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” (emphasis added). These are damning words.

In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which acknowledged and apologized on behalf of the United States government for the injustice done to Japanese Americans. It additionally created a public education fund so American schoolchildren could learn about America’s concentration camps and offered restitution of $20,000 to those who were interned. As President Ronald Reagan signed the legislation into law, he commented that the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII was a “grave mistake” which required the nation to “right a grave wrong” and reaffirm its commitment to “equal justice under the law.” He emphasized that the $20,000 restitution payments were less about property and more about restoring honor and admitting a mistake.

I would be very remiss if I did not give credit to Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, herself a detainee, for her painstaking research at the National Archives to uncover documentation that would lead the CWRIC Commission and Congress to conclude that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was based on “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

America closed the book on the detention of Japanese Americans through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which issued a formal apology and provided reparations for those detained.

The book on ICE is still open.

ICE has largely targeted law-abiding immigrants and, in the process, killed two citizens and injured more who tried to protest their raids. This is appalling. Their actions are devoid of common decency, as even a 5-year-old child is arrested, and are rife with human rights violations as families are torn apart and wages and livelihoods are lost. Fear is causing children to be absent from school; workers and day laborers are choosing to stay away from jobs and workplaces that may be subject to ICE raids. ICE is arresting and detaining people without warrants. And many who do not have access to legal representation are summarily deported to detention centers in foreign countries, where the United States pays a hefty fee for each detainee.

The tally of misguided and extrajudicial detention of immigrants, together with injuries and the murder of protesters, is an open book that has yet to be fully investigated. Trump is unapologetic about these, as is his chief enforcer, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has called Alex Pretti and Renee Good “local terrorists” to justify their murders. Bondi has also pursued “vendetta indictments” against U.S. senators and other political opponents such as Mark Kelly, James Comey, Adam Schiff, and former intelligence officials John Brennan and James Clapper. But the guardrails against these attempted indictments are holding; grand juries, composed largely of ordinary citizens, are refusing to play along. Their refusal to indict Senator Mark Kelly and five other House Democrats for political speech and for exercising their First Amendment rights is salutary and commendable.

As ICE builds detention capacity, raids and arrests continue, ignoring legal guardrails. A federal judge in Minnesota has expressed frustration that ICE has been ignoring hundreds of court orders. But there is a silver lining: USA Today reports that “a striking trend is unfolding at federal courthouses across the nation: judges appointed by both parties are issuing uncharacteristically scathing rebukes of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.”

The arrest of immigrants, some being arrested as they come for their immigration hearings, has the ring of the targeting of Jews by Nazis. These mass arrests and detentions are unprecedented in that they are extrajudicially executed without the benefit of warrants. The construction of massive ICE detention facilities akin to those used to detain thousands of Japanese Americans during WWII is alarming. Executive Order 9066 marked a shameful episode in American history, for which an American president issued a formal apology and taxpayers footed the bill for monetary reparations.

This drift toward authoritarianism today can be stopped. When the Trump administration subverts the Constitution it is sworn to protect, the People must reclaim the powers they have delegated by affirming the rule of law and by exercising their power through elections. The Trump regime is actively trying to subvert elections by undermining the power of the states to conduct them. We must defend state sovereignty in administering elections. Then, through our vote, express our outrage against the assault on the Constitution, the rule of law, the violation of civil liberties, killings, and detentions. These we must do or run the risk of having American concentration camps again.