Actor George Takei, famous for his role in the ‘Star Trek’ franchise, says the Trump administration's push to deport undocumented immigrants echoes the World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Americans.
What Happened: The Star Trek star, who survived Japanese American internment, told CNN's Audie Cornish that Donald Trump's immigration agenda echoes Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime roundup of people with Japanese ancestry.
“But politicians lie, and people believe that lie because there’s hysteria rampant at that time,” he said. “And in our time today, right now, people got swept up by a lie and elected him. And now people have regrets. People must speak out.”
Takei reminded listeners that Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, allowing the government to confine about 120,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire. Guards with rifles watched over families crammed into sparsely insulated barracks, many of them U.S. citizens.
“Even great presidents can get swept up in the hysteria of the times because, to Roosevelt, the West Coast of the United States was just like Pearl Harbor,” Takei said. “It was open. Unprotected and vulnerable. And here were these people that looked exactly like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. And so, he panicked out of ignorance.”
Cornish noted that polls in the 1940s favored internment, just as many voters now support mass deportations.
Why It Matters: Trump proposes slashing $150 billion from other federal programs and redirecting the money to his immigration agenda over the next four years. Immigration and Customs Enforcement already teeters on a budget cliff, and officials warn the agency could exhaust its funds within weeks. Lawmakers from both parties fear Trump will siphon money from other agencies to keep ICE operating, although his new spending package could ease that pressure.
Trump highlighted his hard-line approach last week by telling New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani that he would arrest and deport him if he tried to block federal immigration raids.
Photo Courtesy: Lev Radin on Shutterstock.com
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This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Shivdeep Dhaliwal
