SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — President Donald Trump is expected to invoke a sweeping wartime act that could speed up his plan for mass deportations.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 could give the president tremendous power to target and remove undocumented immigrants.
The last time the act was invoked was during World War II, when Japanese Americans were detained and sent to internment camps, including those who lived in San Diego at the time.
Joseph and Elizabeth Yamada of San Diego were young children the last time the Alien Enemies Act was invoked in the U.S.
The pair met at an internment camp in Poston, Arizona. From there, they returned to San Diego, eventually married, and built a life together in La Jolla.
"When they had to leave, they left everything behind, the business, the house," says their son Garrett Yamada, who spoke to ABC 10News Thursday.
Yamada remembers what his parents shared with him about their time in Arizona.
"Hardship of just being out in the desert. And, you know, barbed wire and machine guns, you know, watching over them," says Yamada about his parents' experience.
Elizabeth Yamada also spoke to ABC 10News back in 2019 about her time at the internment camp.
Thursday, sources told ABC News President Donald Trump is expected to invoke the wartime law, which allows the president to detain or deport natives and citizens of an enemy nation, as part of his plan to carry out and speed up mass deportations.
Tammy Lin is an immigration attorney.
"It goes back to this concern about racial profiling or ethnic profiling. I don't know what the guardrails are on this, it again it's very troubling because it is a wartime power," says Lin.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the act could pave the way for faster deportations without hearings and based on a person's country of birth or citizenship.
"It was a really dark time. For American history, when we use this power to detain us citizens, and I think it's a very bad precedent to try to use this in a way to deport people without having their due process rights," says Lin.
Though Yamada's parents have passed, he can only imagine what they'd say about plans to invoke the wartime law and the impacts it could have.
"Think they would think it's, sort of unbelievably, that it would happen again. I mean that it happened once. We should have learned and that for it to happen again. It's beyond comprehension," says Yamada.
The law is expected to be challenged in court since legal experts say it can only be invoked if the U.S. is at war, under invasion, or under threat of invasion by another nation or government.
