New York Times Compares Trump Border Policy to Japanese-American Internment

The New York Times continued the media’s effort to sensationalize the enforcement of immigration laws on Friday, comparing Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy to the internment of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War.

In an article titled, “California Today: Recalling Japanese Internment in the Era of Trump,” the Times recalled the Japanese-American internment experience, then cited a politician who compared it to President Donald Trump’s policies. The Times did not inform readers that the politician in question, Al Muratsuchi, is a Democrat.

It then cited a retired history teacher who survived the internment camps and who opposes Trump’s policies, but who did not — at least in the article — draw the historical analogy the Times attempted to use his words to maket:

“We have to remember that the incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans without any due process of law began with an executive order, much like the ones that President Trump has been issuing,” Al Muratsuchi, the State Assembly member who sponsored the bill, said in 2017.

For Mr. Okui, news of President Trump’s Muslim ban in 2017 and the separation of immigrant children from their parents in recent weeks distressed him.

“When I saw those kids in cages, it reminded me of a dog pound,” Mr. Okui said. “What is my government doing with these children? It just doesn’t seem moral.”

Unlike the illegal aliens being stopped at the border today, the Japanese-Americans who were interned by (Democrat) President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration in the Second World War were U.S. citizens, and had not committed any crime.

Former First Lady Laura Bush also likened Trump’s policies to the internment of Japanese-Americans in an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier this week. Others have compared Trump’s border policy to the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.