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The Japanese American National Museum this week denounced the opening of a massive immigration detention center at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, calling it a disturbing repeat of U.S. government actions during World War II.
The site, known as the “Lone Star Lockup,” is now the largest detention facility operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Funded with $1.2 billion in federal contracts, the center currently holds more than 1,000 migrants and is expected to expand to 5,000 by 2027.
“The use of national security rhetoric to justify mass incarceration today echoes the same logic that led to the forced removal and incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry. It is inconceivable that the U.S. is once again building concentration camps, denying the lessons learned 80 years ago,” said a post on the museum’s Facebook page.
Fort Bliss previously housed detained civilians of Japanese, German, and Italian descent during World War II.