Trump plans to put migrant children at former Japanese internment camp
Lending even greater significance to the parallels commentators and historians
have drawn between U.S. migrant detention centers and concentration camps of
the past, the Trump administration is reportedly planning to hold more than a
thousand immigrant children at an Oklahoma army base that was used as an internment
camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.
According to Time, Fort Sill
"has been selected to detain 1,400 children until they can be given to an
adult relative."
"Between 1942 and 1946, the U.S. government forcibly removed an estimated 120,000 men, women and children from their homes and incarcerated them across the country. Fort Sill was later used to hold German prisoners of war."
As Time pointed out, the horrific practice of
detaining immigrants at the site of a former internment camp did not begin with
Trump.
"In 2014, the Obama administration placed around 7,700
migrant children on bases in Texas, California, and Oklahoma, including Fort
Sill. The temporary shelters were shuttered after four months," Time reported.
Under Obama, Fort Sill was used to detain around 200 children.
News of the Trump administration's decision to send over a thousand children to the base as
it detains a record number of immigrants was met with horror.
"We will look back at this moment in time and ask ourselves
what we did to put a stop to these horrific, inhumane policies. Speak up. Speak
out. Be on the right side of history."
Echoing a sentiment that was common across social media, Yale
legal scholar Tiffany Li added, "Those who fail to learn from
history are doomed to repeat it."
As Time reported, the Trump administration has
detained more than 40,000 children this year alone.
"That's a 57 percent increase from last year, which is a
rate on-pace to surpass the record figures in 2016, when 59,171 minors were
taken into custody," according to Time.
