George Takei added his voice to the growing list of celebrities and politicians condemning the Trump administration policy of separating the families of migrants at the border.
In an op-ed for Foreign Policy, the actor wrote that what was happening at the U.S.-Mexico border was worse than what he experienced living at a Japanese internment camp during World War II saying that “even then, they didn’t separate children from families.”
“In one core, horrifying way this is worse. 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,” Takei wrote.
“I cannot for a moment imagine what my childhood would have been like had I been thrown into a camp without my parents. 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.”
Takei said that despite his internment, sticking together with his family allowed him to keep a semblance of normalcy and kept the “scars of our unjust imprisonment from deepening on my soul.”
The family separation policy came in for another day of intense media coverage on Tuesday. The set of “Morning Joe,” said he children were being taken “hostage” on the U.S. border in the service of the president’s plan for a border wall. On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen held a contentious press conference with reporters where she defended the policy.
Journalists also confirmed that many children were being placed in cages, despite past claims by Trump surrogates that it was not the case. The Associated Press reporting was unequivocal.
“Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets,” it reported.