George Takei: Trump Policy Separating Families ‘Worse’ Than Japanese Internment Camps

“Star Trek” actor and LGBT activist George Takei, who was sent to an internment camp at 5 years old, called the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their families “worse” than the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in a new op-ed published in Foreign Policy on Tuesday.

“In one core, horrifying way this is worse,” Takei writes of the current state of affairs. “At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents. We were not pulled screaming from our mothers’ arms. We were not left to change the diapers of younger children by ourselves.”

Takei said Trump’s policy fills him with “both rage and grief” and is calling on leaders to “ensure history does not repeat itself in full.”

“I cannot for a moment imagine what my childhood would have been like had I been thrown into a camp without my parents,” Takei continues. “That this is happening today fills me with both rage and grief: rage toward a failed political leadership who appear to have lost even their most basic humanity, and a profound grief for the families affected.”



The Hill added:

Sessions announced the so-called zero tolerance policy earlier this year, saying the Department of Justice would criminally prosecute all adults attempting to illegally cross the southern border into the U.S. As a result, families who crossed together would in some cases be separated, he said.

The policy has become the subject of widespread backlash, though Trump has repeatedly blamed Democrats for the policy.

Members of Congress responded by introducing legislation to end the practice of separating families.