Trump Administration to Use Former Japanese Internment Camp to House Migrant Children

President Donald Trump’s administration will use a military base in Oklahoma, once used as an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, as a temporary shelter for migrant children.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will operate the facility, said Fort Sill will be used to detain 1,400 migrant children. According to the agency, the base will be used “as a temporary emergency influx shelter.” The U.S. government already operates nearly 170 facilities and programs to house migrant children in 23 states.

When reached for comment, an Administration for Children and Families spokesperson said that the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement “is legally required to provide for the care and custody of all [unaccompanied child migrants] referred to ORR until they are released to appropriate sponsors, usually a parent or relative, while their immigration cases proceed.”

Fort Sill has long been used as an incarceration facility. In the late 1800s, Apache prisoners of war were moved to Fort Sill from other U.S. Army bases in Florida and Alabama. Native prisoners were told they would remain at Fort Sill indefinitely.

The base was later used to incarcerate nearly 700 Japanese immigrants in 1942, according to the Densho Encyclopedia. Descriptions of conditions at the camp were gruesome. Japanese prisoners sometimes lived in 100-degree weather with no escape from the hot temperatures. Guard towers “were equipped with 30-caliber machine guns, shotguns, and searchlights,” the encyclopedia notes.



http://fortune.com/2019/06/12/trump-migrant-children-internment/?xid=gn_editorspicks