For as far back as he can remember, Russell Endo heard from relatives about his grandfather’s arrest in 1942, when an FBI agent took him from his home in Southern California under suspicion that he was aiding the enemy nation of Japan.
Heigoro Endo, a Japanese national, had lived in the United States for four decades, working as a fisherman and raising three children. An FBI case file that his grandson dug up years later mentions his connection to a local language school, which was viewed as a potential source of propaganda for the Japanese government.
Heigoro was held for several weeks at the Tuna Canyon Detention Station north of Los Angeles under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and then appeared, without legal counsel, at a Justice Department hearing. Authorities paroled him after testimony that the FBI had misrepresented evidence, said Russell Endo, whose research of government records of 500 wartime arrests under the law showed no evidence that the accused individuals were acting disloyally or aiding enemy nations.
“If you read the case files, they are completely innocent,” said Endo, 80, a retired professor of Asian American studies. “The problem with the law is that there is no oversight of what the government does and those who were picked up had no recourse. People were just swept up.”
In recent days, the story and the lessons Endo drew from it have gained new salience, after President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II to arrest and deport Venezuelans, who were accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members, without a court hearing. Trump claims the gang is working in tandem with the Venezuelan government to “invade” the United States, though border crossings are at their lowest level in decades, and experts say the group has not firmly established itself in the country.
Endo and other Japanese American community leaders say they fear Trump’s actions could lead to abuses similar to those that took place during one of the darkest chapters of the nation’s history. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s use of the law, in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese military’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, led to the arrest of 31,000 Japanese, German and Italian nationals in the United States and Latin America. Many were later found to have been improperly arrested, jailed and, in some cases, repatriated.
That effort was among a series of sweeping domestic national security measures from the U.S. government to crack down on those viewed as potentially disloyal. Several months after invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of anyone deemed a threat from the West Coast to “relocation centers” — paving the way for the U.S. government to incarcerate 120,000 people of Japanese descent, including more than 70,000 American citizens.
Decades later, the United States would issue formal apologies and pay reparations to those who had been incarcerated under both the Alien Enemies Act and the executive order.
Before World War II, the Alien Enemies Act had been invoked just twice. During the War of 1812, President James Madison required British nationals to register personal information, including their addresses, with local authorities. During World War I, the Woodrow Wilson administration imposed work and speech restrictions on foreign nationals from Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, and incarcerated thousands of Germans until the war’s end.
On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to use the law to expedite the removal of “savage” gang members and dismantle transnational criminal networks. His rhetoric prompted a coalition of Japanese American civic organizations, civil rights groups and legal institutions to raise public awareness about the dangers and legal dubiousness of the wartime law and pressure Congress to take action.
The Alien Enemies Act puts “too much power in the executive branch because it can be used at a whim — that’s what he’s exhibiting now,” former U.S. congressman Mike Honda (D-California), who served in the House from 2001-2017, said of Trump.
In recent years, Honda consulted with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) on legislation to repeal the law. Their bill, the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, which failed to get a vote in the last congressional session, was reintroduced in January.
“It goes against the grain of our Constitution and violates too many rights. The law doesn’t deserve to be on the books,” said Honda, 83, who was 1 year old when his family was jailed at the incarceration camp in Amache in southeastern Colorado.
Trump justified his authorization of the Alien Enemies Act to arrest and deport 137 alleged gang members to a mega-prison in El Salvador. A federal judge ordered the administration to turn around any planes carrying deportees on Saturday, but three planes nonetheless landed hours later. Authorities have not disclosed the identities of the migrants or presented evidence that they are gang members or committed crimes.
Family members of several of the men sent to El Salvador deny that they are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. In a court filing, an acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field director acknowledged that “many” of the men deported under the act do not have criminal records but said that did not mean they do not pose a threat.
Descendants of Japanese detainees under the Alien Enemies Act described their relatives being taken away with no warning and little explanation, denied access to lawyers or contact with their families.
Larry Oda, 80, the president of the Japanese American Citizens League, said his father, Junichi, was living with friends on a farm in Clovis, California, near Fresno. He had relocated there because it was outside the military exclusion zone where people of Japanese descent were prohibited under Roosevelt’s orders.
A day after the zone was expanded to include the entire state, Oda said, two men in overcoats came to arrest his father, a Japanese national, while the rest of the family was at a picnic. Junichi was taken to Camp Lordsburg in New Mexico, a facility operated by the Justice Department, before being sent to another incarceration camp for Japanese, German and Italian foreign nationals near Crystal City, Texas, where Larry Oda was born in 1945.
“One of the things that affected me the most was that myself and my family had done nothing wrong. We were targeted because of the way we looked,” Oda said. After leaving the camp, he said, he lived with the feeling that he needed to be sure not to do anything that could draw negative attention over fear that “I would be put in prison for no reason.”
It wasn’t just U.S. residents who were targeted under the Alien Enemies Act. Under pressure from the United States, some Latin American nations, including Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Cuba, arrested and detained Japanese, German and Italian nationals and transferred them to incarceration camps in the United States. Some of the Japanese detainees were later used in prisoner exchanges between the United States and Japan.
In 1999, the Clinton administration agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by Japanese Latin American survivors of the camps who made allegations of kidnapping and illegal imprisonment. Each of the survivors was awarded $5,000 and a formal apology from President Bill Clinton. (The incarcerated Japanese Americans received a presidential apology and $20,000 under a law approved by Congress in 1988.)
“It’s a shock to many people in all communities to even know this Alien Enemies Act exists. And now, as things are unfolding, we’re understanding the danger of it,” said Grace Shimizu, 71, whose father, Susumu, was a Japanese immigrant from Peru who was imprisoned under the law at the incarceration camp in Crystal City, Texas.
In 2001, she created the Enemy Alien Files, a traveling exhibit, now posted online, to tell the stories of those arrested under the law.
“One of the lessons of the World War II period was that the first targeting of people as the enemy were immigrants, and they were vulnerable, even if they had lived here for many decades,” Shimizu said. “And then we saw how quickly it could be extended to citizens. That’s the significance of the Japanese American experience — it was both a racist attack and also an attack based on nationality.”
For the Endo family, Heigoro’s parole after his appearance at the Justice Department hearing did not result in his freedom. He was reunited with his family at a temporary incarceration facility at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in Arcadia, California. They were held for several months until being moved to a permanent camp at the Jerome War Relocation Center in southeastern Arkansas.
“The lesson is that history is repeating itself,” Russell Endo said. “People are using a law that is very dangerous, and the government is abusing it.”
