George Takei compares separation of migrant families to Japanese internment camps

“Star Trek” actor George Takei compared migrant detention centers to Japanese internment camps during WWII in a new op-ed published in Foreign Policy on Tuesday.

Takei, who was sent to an internment camp at 5 years old, calls the Trump administration policy of separating migrant parents and children at the U.S. border worse, in some ways, than Japanese internment camps. 

“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.” {mosads}

Takei, a longtime critic of President Trump, goes on to say the policy fills him with “both rage and grief” and calls on lawmakers 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.”

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.