A group of Japanese-Americans criticized the construction of a new immigration detention center in Texas at a military base used to imprison Japanese people during World War II.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Center in Fort Bliss, El Paso, which opened last weekend, will be able to accommodate as many as 5,000 detainees in the coming months, making it the largest federal detention center in US history. However, Japanese-American advocates say the facility that imprisoned people once considered “enemy aliens” is a sober reminder of a dark past.
“We’re looking forward to seeing you in the world,” said Anne Burrows, president and CEO of the National Museum of Japan in Los Angeles.
“I can’t imagine the US building a concentration camp again and denying the lessons learned 80 years ago.”
The Trump administration has returned to comparisons made between base use during World War II and the current immigration environment. This includes from the American Civil Liberties Union, which described the facility as “another shameful chapter in Fort Bliss history.”
“Comparisons with illegal foreign detention centers with suppression camps used during World War II are crazy and lazy,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, in a statement. “The fact is that the ice is targeting the worst and worst: murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists, and more.”
The vast detention center, which costs around $1.2 billion to build, currently has the capacity to accommodate an estimated 1,000 people. More than 80 years ago, the base was the official US military facility used as a temporary concentration camp that houses citizens from Japan, Germany and Italy, said Derek Tomyn, president of the National Japanese-American Historical Society.
The square facility contained two compounds surrounded by barbed wire fences, Tomeen said. The armed guard tower sat in the corner. In addition to other immigrants detained, many Japanese individuals were awaiting hearing before the enemy’s foreign hearing committee, Tomeen explained.
“In general, those held at US Army facilities were first-generation Japanese-Americans who were detained early in World War II, and were then processed and shipped to other concentration camps,” Tomeen said.
Both Tomeen and Burrows said comparisons between current immigration detention facilities and past detention camps were “no confusion or negligence.”
“More than 125,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from the West Coast in 1942, and today our immigrant brothers and sisters face the horrors of ice and CBP attacks across the country,” Burrows said. “It was just a miscarriage of justice back then, and it was a miscarriage of justice back then.”
Tomeen said he is considering ways in which immigrants have been blamed for taking jobs, abuse government services and being the source of social issues of scapegoating in previously marginalized communities, including during World War II.
“Many of these same immigrants fled their home countries to prevent them from being taken away and were put into camp without accusations or justified procedures,” Tomeen said of his recent detention.
The administration said US immigration and customs enforcement prioritize targeting criminals, but about 70% of the estimated 59,380 individuals detained in ice as of August 10 have not been criminally convicted, an independent nonpartisan data research institute, according to data collected by the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse. Texas, where Fort Bliss is located, is the state that housed the most people in 2025.
Fort Bliss is central to widespread criticism, especially in the local El Paso community. McLaughlin previously said in a statement that the facility will provide legal representatives, legal libraries, access to visits, treatment and recreational spaces. However, D-Texas MP Veronica Escobar, who toured the facility on Monday, criticized the enormous amount of funds approved for the site, along with great concerns about the conditions of the centre run by private contractors.
“I think it’s too easy for standards to slip when there are private facilities,” Escobar said at a press conference Monday. “I think private facilities are open too often, in contrast to government facilities.”
Many, including the ACLU, also raised the facility’s past as an intake shelter that housed around 5,000 immigrant children at its peak. Audio in 2021 revealed allegations of sexual misconduct by staff against minors, in addition to a lack of clean clothing and other concerns.
Tomeen said the hastily opening of Fort Bliss detention centers and others around the country is probably evidence that the United States had not learned any lessons from its treatment of immigrants and Japanese-Americans during World War II.
“Many of the Japanese-American community encourages the administration not to sideline civil rights due to racism, rumours, hysteria and propaganda,” Tomeen said.
