This is to invite you to a Nikkei Progressives-initiated press conference on Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at 10 am at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). The urgency and need for a quick response necessitated scheduling this on short notice.
Attending organizations (JANM, JACL, Manzanar Committee, Tuna Canyon, and others) will be introduced, and several representative groups will make short statements.
You are welcome to bring copies of your organization’s statement on the issue, to include in the press packet. A general press statement, similar in content and tone with this message, will be circulated in advance to you.
President Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) to speed up mass deportations. He began on Saturday (March 15, 2025) with the deportations of 238 Venezuelans suspected of having ties to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, but all Venezuelan nationals are at risk.
Trump claims the gang is “threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the U.S.” the minimum required legal threshold. Later on Saturday, U.S District Court Judge James Boasberg put a 14-day hold on the deportations.
The Justice Department then appealed the 14-day hold to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Alien Enemies Act paved the way for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans in WWII and required no evidence or court hearings. Those subject to the law could be summarily arrested, detained and deported, without the due process protections in U.S. immigration law, including opportunities for a court hearing.
The movement for Japanese American reparations, the annual Day of Remembrance programs and pilgrimages to concentration camps have, for the past forty years, voiced a deep commitment from Japanese Americans that such injustices must not happen again.
Now as attention focuses on the AEA, it is necessary and urgent that Japanese Americans, and our justice-minded allies, raise our voices to denounce these wholesale deportations that violate and throw out longstanding existing immigration law.
To this end, we urge passage of the Neighbors not Enemies Act, co-sponsored by Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) that repeals the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and affirms the principle that all immigrants deserve just treatment under the law.
For more information contact Mark Masaoka at marktmasaoka@gmail.com or (323) 356-6352.
