George Takei: Taking children from their parents at the border is worse than Japanese internment

George Takei wrote that the plight of detained immigrants at the U.S. border is worse than the Japanese internment camps he was forced into as a child "in one core, horrifying way." He wasn't separated from his family like the more than 2,000 children suffering due to Trump's zero tolerance policy.

"At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents," Takei wrote in an essay for Foreign Policy published on Tuesday. "We were not pulled screaming from our mothers' arms. We were not left to change the diapers of younger children by ourselves."

On Monday alone, two separate reports exposed just how disturbing conditions at the border are -- ProPublica published audio of children screaming after they were taken from their parents, and the Associated Press reported that detained teenagers had to change toddlers' diapers since they were separated from caretakers. Although Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the Trump administration doesn't have a "policy of separating families at the border," she also told a White House press briefing that "everyone is subject to prosecution."

Under the Trump Administration's policy, adults crossing the border are treated as criminals who are then sent to different detainment facilities from their children. Under the Obama Administration, children caught crossing the border with their families could stay with at least one parent throughout the detainment process.

Takei, along with thousands of other American citizens of Japanese ancestry, was forced into living in confinement after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. His family had to live in converted horse stables before they were moved to camps in Arkansas and California. Takei has spoken openly about the camps in the past: In one interview, he said there were three levels of barbed wire fences and tanks patrolling the perimeter.

"At least during the internment, my parents were able to place themselves between the horror of what we were facing and my own childish understanding of circumstances," Takei wrote in the searing essay.

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Takei has been vocal about taking political action, encouraging his Twitter followers to vote "for the children ripped away from their parents, and for those gunned down in their schools."

He warned that past presidents justified inhumane treatment in the past by scapegoating vulnerable minority groups:

It was a lie, and a big one, but it was one repeated enough, and said with enough conviction, that rest of the country went along with it. We were the murderers, the thugs, the animals then — and since you couldn’t tell the good from the bad, you might as well round up everyone in the name of national security.

Takei also pointed out that this isn't a partisan issue -- after all, it was a Democratic president who signed the executive order allowing the camps to detain 120,000 Japenese-Americans -- but "even people of good heart and conscience can be swept up in the frenzy."

"The United States’ flirtation with authoritarianism is not tied to any political party," Takei said.