WASHINGTON — Rep. Mark Takano returned to Southern California on the Fourth of July and compared the Trump administration's immigration sweeps to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, calling on Congress to halt the operations. During the visit, he heard reports of immigration patrols moving through communities and spoke with one constituent who said they had begun carrying a passport to prove legal status.

Takano's American-born parents were incarcerated as young children with their families during the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. After the United States entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forcibly relocated. His father, William Takano, was two years old when his family was sent in 1942 to the Tule Lake incarceration camp in California.

"I do feel like there's a similarity of circumstance of my own 2-year-old father and my 1-year-old mother being labeled as enemy aliens and they're considered a danger to national security," Takano said. "They're put into these incarceration camps."

President Donald Trump's campaign included a promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. Immigration operations have included rounding up, detaining, and deporting thousands of people. The White House replaced the leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, and Republican allies in Congress have provided billions of dollars in special funds for immigration and deportation actions.

"Will Americans generations from now visit Alligator Alcatraz and think to themselves, How could our government do this?" he said. "These future generations of Americans will look to us, the Congress, to see what we did to try to stop it."

In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act to apologize for the injustices done to Japanese American detainees and to provide $20,000 to each person detained. President Ronald Reagan signed the measure into law that year. Discussions are underway in Congress about providing redress to individuals whose car windows were smashed, homes raided, and livelihoods disrupted during Trump-era immigration enforcement operations.