Rachel Maddow compares alleged Trump immigration policy to WWII Japanese internment camps
MS NOW host Rachel Maddow compared the Trump administration's reported plans to construct several large-scale holding centers for deportees to the internment camps built for Japanese Americans during World War II.
During a Thursday appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," Maddow was asked about her new podcast series "Burn Order," which examines the U.S. government's 1940s executive order for Japanese American internment following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
After giving the audience a brief synopsis of her new show, the MS NOW host detailed how President Donald Trump's reported plans to build the holding centers reminded her of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's past decision to incarcerate Japanese Americans.
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"So in World War II, there was a racial decree from our government that said, not just people who were immigrants from Japan and therefore Japanese citizens, but Americans born here — U.S. citizens — if they were of Japanese descent, if they had any Japanese racial lineage, they were expelled from the west coast of this country and more than 120,000 of them were locked up for years," she explained.
"It's something that was so hard to believe, like, 10 years ago. Looking back — and now it's not as hard to believe, is it?" Kimmel said.
Maddow cited a December report from The Washington Post alleging that, according to internal ICE documents reviewed by the outlet, the Trump administration plans to build seven large-scale detention centers for deportees. The Post reported the facilities could house up to 80,000 people across seven locations.
"The Washington Post just reported on internal documents in the administration that say that they want a series of temporary relocation camps where they're going to hold people for weeks, and then they're going to send them to about 10 big warehouse-style facilities where they're going to hold up to 10,000 people at a time. That's exactly, exactly the structure they used for Japanese American incarceration during World War II," the MS NOW host asserted.
Maddow claimed that the Trump administration was stripping away the rights of citizens by "defining people as no longer protected by the U.S. Constitution."
"[The U.S. government] just said U.S. citizenship doesn't matter anymore. And I think that's something that this administration is more than flirting with at this point," she contended.
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The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
When reached for comment by the Post, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, told the outlet that she "cannot confirm" the report and declined to answer questions about the alleged warehouse plan.