Abstract
The US government detained 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in 1942, including the author's family, due to their ancestry, not their actions.
In 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is rounding up detainees in Minnesota, disproportionately targeting communities of color, and dispersing them to detention facilities hundreds of miles away.
The authors argue that the current operation, Operation Metro Surge, bears structural parallels to the 1942 Japanese internment, with the government using administrative convenience and geographic distance to evade legal accountability and deny detainees their constitutional rights.