Past is Precedent: When the U.S. Detained American Families in South Texas

In October, it is still hot in South Texas. It is the kind of heat that envelopes and immobilizes you. The kind that makes it impossible to be outdoors for any length of time before needing the safety of shade. As I stood in what used to be a “swimming pool” for families arrested under the “Alien Enemies Act,” all I could think about was how maddening it must feel to be imprisoned twice. First, by your government for no other reason than your ancestry, and then by the heat.  

From 1942 to 1948, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) operated an internment camp for families in Crystal City, Texas. The U.S. government detained American citizens and non-citizens of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry for months to years at this site in South Texas.  The U.S. government had forcibly transported some of these individuals to the site from Latin America, including 2,000 Japanese Peruvians. At the direction of the U.S. government, personnel brought these Japanese Latin Americans to the U.S. for the purpose of using them as hostages for future prisoner of war exchanges. DOJ and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detained people of all ages at Crystal City. Several children were born and died at the site, including many adults. At its height, the U.S. government held over 4,000 individuals and families at the camp. The U.S. government built the site over a migrant labor camp where individuals of Mexican ancestry toiled in desperately poor living conditions under the authority of the U.S. Farm Security Administration.  

At the invitation of the Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee (CCPC), I had the honor of visiting the site alongside survivors and their descendants. While I was delighted to discover that many of them spoke Spanish as Japanese Latin Americans, their stories of life as an “Alien Enemy” were frighteningly close to the current reality of unhinged immigration enforcement in America. Many shared how armed government agents would arrive at their homes and deny children or spouses a chance to hug their fathers’ good-bye. The government later offered to reunite these fathers with their families at Crystal City, if they agreed to renounce their U.S. citizenship.  In this way, the U.S. government promoted Crystal City as a “family reunification” site. But in reality, it was the government’s threat of permanent family separation that coerced fathers and spouses to agree to be relocated to the camp.  

Similar coercive tactics are in place now. Early in the Trump administration, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Thomas Homan declared, in response to concerns about the separation of families, that “families can be deported together.” Once again, presenting deportation together as a family, even with U.S. citizen children in the mix, as an acceptable solution to the government policies that inevitably lead to family separation. 

Crystal City and other U.S. World War II detention sites were the products of a nation at war and the inability of leaders to oppose policy positions based in racism, xenophobia, and fear. President Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act following the Japanese military attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The president also issued other proclamations such as one that required so called “alien enemies” to register with the government. The registration eventually led to the detention and forcible relocation of American citizens of Japanese ancestry, in addition to non-citizens. The Trump administration has resurrected a similar, but distinct policy, through its “Alien Registration” requirement.  

The country has once again invoked the Alien Enemies Act despite the absence of any predatory incursion or military invasion. In its modern-day invocation, the U.S. sent approximately 280 Venezuelan and El Salvadoran men to be detained at an El Salvadoran jail notorious for torture. While 252 Venezuelan men were later released as part of a hostage exchange, the Salvadoran men have been effectively disappeared. As litigation against the Alien Enemies Act works its way through the courts, the Supreme Court may side with the president’s use of this extreme wartime authority against migrants. If that happens, there is no doubt that this administration would consider escalating their current policies to include the arrest and detention of American citizens.   

How can we respond? The lesson of Crystal City is not of fear and defeat, but of the power of memory, solidarity, and boldly demanding redress and accountability. An example of that solidarity is the town itself. Crystal City is now predominantly Latine. In the late 1960s, the town’s Mexican American teenage residents  staged school walkouts to demand better treatment in the face of dehumanizing corporeal punishment for things like speaking Spanish in school. These activists eventually created the La Raza Unida political party. The town’s solidarity with the Crystal City survivors is visible from the warm hospitality they extended to our pilgrimage group and several public memorial markers. The town of Crystal City does not hide the fact that this was a place of detention, and that is its own form of protest.  

Lastly, a beautiful example of memory and accountability is the Ireichō Book of Names. This book is the first accurate and comprehensive list of every person of Japanese ancestry incarcerated in the World War II era internment camps. Each page has the names and year of birth of individuals held against their will in these camps. The goal is to acknowledge each name by placing a Japanese hanko (stamp) underneath. A reminder that even small acts of protest can be meaningful in the fight against authoritarianism.  

Suggested Further Reading & Viewing 

1. “The Train to Crystal City,” Jan Jarboe Russell. This book tells the story of two American-born teenage girls and their years spent in the detention camp.  
2. “The Alien Enemies Files,” online exhibit hosted by the National Japanese American Historical Society and in partnership with collaboration Japanese, German and Italian American communities that documents through photos and stories their experiences during World War II.