Imagine No Alien Enemies Act

“Never Again: The Fight to Repeal the Alien Enemies Act” plenary panelists Naoko Fujii and Mike Honda (Photo: George Toshio Johnston)

N.M. plenary makes a case for repealing the problematic 1798 law.

By P.C. Staff

The man known to many as “Uncle Mike” has crammed a lot of seeing, doing and accomplishing into his more than eight decades of life. Serving in the Peace Corps. Earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San Jose State University in the town where he grew up. Having a three-decadelong career as an educator. Serving on San Jose’s Planning Commission, thanks to an appointment by the late Norman Mineta when his fellow Nikkei-jin was the city’s mayor. Serving in the California Assembly. 
And, from 2001-17, serving in the United States House of Representatives, representing his home state’s 15th and 17th congressional districts.

But there is one remaining, vexing task Mike Honda has yet to complete, his now decades-long quest: repealing a centuries-old relic of a law that he presciently understood before it actually happened was a loaded and unsecured weapon ready to be misused and abused should an unscrupulous, unconstrained and motivated person or party ever be in a position of power.

AEA Repeal

That law is the Alien Enemies Act, and the campaign to relegate it to join its three related, defunct laws in the trash heap of outdated, misguided and racist laws of America’s history was the subject of the July 18 plenary panel discussion at the JACL National Convention titled “Never Again: The Fight to Repeal the Alien Enemies Act.”

Honda, 84, was one of the plenary’s members and only one of an age to have experienced having been incarcerated with his American family at Colorado’s Granada War Relocation Authority Center, aka Camp Amache, one of America’s 10 War Relocation Authority Centers operated by the federal government during World War II.

Also on the panel was moderator Lorraine K. Bannai, an attorney whose résumé includes being professor emerita at Seattle University School of Law and director emerita of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, the latter of which is now based at the University of California Irvine’s School of Law, and serving as an attorney on the legal teams mobilized to revisit via writ of error coram nobis the three WWII-era Supreme Court cases brought by Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui.

The two panelists joining Honda were attorney Naoko Fujii, chair of the Social Justice Action Committee, newly established by the JACL National Board during the convention, and a member of the organization’s Alien Enemies Act amicus brief legal team, and attorney Katherine Yon Ebright of the Brennan Center’s Liberty & National Security Program, where she serves as counsel and focuses on war powers and the constitutional separation of powers.

History, Use of the AEA

Noting that prior to President Donald Trump’s March 15 invocation of the AEA over the “invasion of the United States” by Venezuelan criminal gang Tren De Aragua — which led to the deportation and incarceration of Venezuelan nationals and likely would have led to more deportations until the Supreme Court on May 16 temporarily blocked him from continuing to use the 1798 law — Bannai noted that “it was used to incarcerate members of our own families … because of their race and national origin,” a reference to how, during WWII, the government invoked the AEA for use on Issei who were at the time barred from even attempting to become naturalized U.S. citizens.

Bannai noted that despite the legal distinctions between the use of the AEA against Issei and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s use of Executive Order 9066 against ethnic Japanese, citizen and alien alike, which led to the forced removal from the three western-most U.S. states into the 10 WRA centers that incarcerated more than 125,000 people, both legal machinations had the “same exact roots of prejudice and othering and foreignness and suspicion.”

Bannai then called on Ebright to elaborate on the “the context and history behind the Alien Enemies Act, how it’s being used against other communities today and the present litigation concerning it.

Quasi-War With France

“The JACL team that I’ve been in touch with knows that I can go on for hours talking about the history of this law, but I will try to condense it to around five minutes,” Ebright said. Noting that the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, of which the AEA was a part and today remains as the last extant act of those four original laws, came about from the Quasi-War with France.

“The United States at that time, 1798, had no real national security law. It had no real criminal law, no real immigration law, nothing for the president to protect the country with,” Ebright said. Congress’ solution? The Alien and Sedition Acts. “Of course, we had very different conceptions of due process, nondiscrimination — the words ‘equal protection under law’ did not exist in the U.S. Constitution at that time.”

By 1800, the Quasi-War with France ended — and Thomas Jefferson was elected president. Under his administration, three of the four parts of the Alien and Sedition Acts also ended, with only the Alien Enemies Act still extant. But with the War of 1812 against Great Britain — which Ebright noted “was a declared war” — “ … the Alien Enemies Act was used to take British subjects who they were worried might affect coastal war efforts and moved them inland.”

Jumping ahead a century plus a few years, the U.S. found itself in another war — World War I — again, declared by Congress. “In WWI, we see this law used for internment, and many countries around the world used internment policies throughout the First World War,” Ebright said. “Around 6,000 Germans and Austro-Hungarians were put into camps, really based on who they were, not because they were actually materially dangerous. It was usually you had failed to register with the government, or you moved your home and you didn’t tell the government where exactly you were moving, and then you were put into an internment camp.”

AEA’s Use in WWII

Following the War of 1812 and WWI, the AEA was invoked after the U.S. formally declared war on Japan and Axis powers Germany and Italy after Japan’s Dec. 7, 1941, attack on U.S. Navy assets at Pearl Harbor in the territory of Hawaii; it was the first time the law was used in what Ebright described as an “invasion” or “predatory incursion.”

Under Roosevelt, within 24 hours “there are over 1,000 immigrants, noncitizens of Japanese descent, who are in detention,” said Ebright. She said there would ultimately be “around 15,000 interned under the Alien Enemies Act, complemented by an additional 2,000 Japanese Latin Americans who were rounded up in Latin American countries and then put into internment camps in the United States.” Roosevelt also proclaimed that he was entitled to use the AEA “against the Germans and the Italian noncitizens as well,” totaling about 14,000.

“This is now looked back on as a really hysterical, unnecessary response, and the vast, vast, vast majority of people who were held in these camps had no criminal record, were here lawfully — permanent residents had simply not naturalized.

“If you look at the basis for why these individuals were interned, it’s often because they were these ethnic leaders, community leaders. They taught Japanese language, they did kendo, things that have absolutely nothing to do with loyalty or potential danger to a war effort.

“This law, unfortunately, was not repealed after WWII,” Ebright continued. “For reasons that are obvious to this community, there was much more focus on Executive Order 9066, even though the Alien Enemies Act paved the way for the ultimate issuance and use of Executive Order 9066.”

AEA Today

As promised during his presidential campaign, after taking office in January, President Trump invoked the AEA and set into motion the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants under the guise that “unlawful migration, narcotics trafficking and gang violence constitute an ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion.’”

“Narcotics trafficking is serious,” Ebright said. “Gang violence is serious. Crime in our community requires some sort of response. But it’s not this.” She further noted that not only is there no predatory incursion or war occurring, but also the absence of “the full legal process” for those who were deported is especially problematic.

Bannai turned to Fujii to explain the status of Japanese American community activism and advocacy around the Alien Enemies Act repeal. In reference to Ebright’s work “in coordinating a whole amicus brief campaign” that “complements the main ACLU litigation against President Trump,” Fujii said part of that effort involved “finding the right parties” to make the most effective legal arguments.

Dual Amicus Briefs

“As Japanese Americans, we were the last group that the Alien Enemies Act was used on. So, we are working on two amicus briefs,” Fujii said. Answering her own question as to why Japanese Americans are working on two amicus briefs instead of just one, Fujii said it was because there is a page limit. “Because we have so much to say, we’re doing it in two briefs.”

Describing the first amicus brief, Fujii said, “The first one, which we filed in June in the Court of Appeals level, is on behalf of the JACL and 63 other Asian American organizations, and that’s making more legal arguments about the Korematsu cases and the coram nobis cases. Basically, don’t repeat history, and don’t lie about the evidence that you have to deport somebody.” (Read the June 6, 2025, Pacific Citizen, “JACL Takes Bold Stand in Federal Appeals Court Amicus Brief Against Discriminatory Alien Enemies Act,” tinyurl.com/yc8n6u9c.)

Regarding the second amicus brief, which has yet to be filed, Fujii said that it is on behalf of individuals who are descendants of ethnic Japanese who were AEA victims during WWII. “We will be personally signing on to this amicus brief our names,” she said, to essentially bear witness for ancestors as to how the government misapplied the Alien Enemies Act during WWII, citing its unfairness, hardships caused and the lack of due process. “It was so absurd. My great-grandfather was just a laundry person. He didn’t do anything.”

Fujii said that the second amicus brief will be on behalf of not only Japanese Americans but also “the Japanese Latin Americans and the Germans and the Italian descendants” and that so far 150 have signed on. “We are looking for more descendants of Alien Enemies Act relatives to join us. That’s one of the big projects we’re doing right now.”

As for when the second amicus brief will be filed to the Supreme Court, Fujii said it may be either by the end of this year or early next year, depending on the court’s schedule. “We are creating more Alien Enemy Act stories and … we will be posting them on the JACL website. The stories are really fascinating, and I invite everybody to read them.”

Uncle Mike Takes the Mic

With that, Bannai brought the discussion back to Honda, asking him why he continued his advocacy to repeal the AEA, which goes back to 2010 when he was still a congressman.

“It came from the idea that in 1988 when JACL successfully passed HR 442, exacting an apology from our government for what they did through Executive Order 9066, that it was an unequivocal, unambiguous apology from the government to us. Unprecedented.

“And from that, many legislators, many policymakers knew that they were on call if they ever did this again because in the first Trump administration, when he was talking about herding up folks and putting them in cages, people have responded by invoking the history and the story of the Japanese Americans. And that was because of work that culminated in 1988.”

Still, the continued existence of the AEA and how it could be misapplied bothered him. After doing some research, Honda decided it was necessary to write a bill to repeal it, and he even tried to get support on his 2010 bill from Eric Holder, then-attorney general under President Barack Obama. “He felt that it was not necessary to repeal the law because in case we do declare a war against a nation or another government that had attacked us, that we would need that law.”

Is the AEA Even Necessary?

To Honda, that made no sense. “I said to him, ‘In 2001, we were attacked by terrorists on this land, and we had an authorization for use of military force by Congress to the White House, and that gave the president the authority to move forward and use military force against our enemies — but the key word was ‘terrorists.’”

For Honda, the misgivings he had in 2010 about how the AEA could be misused despite limitations that a president could only invoke it during wartime would come home to roost with the election of President Trump. From Honda’s perspective, Trump simply wants to invoke the AEA at will so that he can bypass normal due process.

The solution for Honda on how to deal with AEA as a legal means to bypass due process by any president who might wish to abuse it is to repeal it — and the means to do that is the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, introduced to the Senate by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and the House of Representatives by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Jan. 22.

The JACL, Honda believes, has a vital role in the success or failure of the Neighbors Not Enemies Act. “Whether you’re a citizen or a noncitizen, you still have the protection of the Constitution of this country, and that’s how the Constitution has evolved since 1798. JACL and JACLers, Nikkeis, we have it in our DNA now, in our history to know better, to be able to lead on this issue of repealing this law because we lived it.

“We fought for the apology,” Honda continued, “and the apology just only was half the battle because the other battle was for our grandparents, who were not citizens, who were rounded up without due process — and it’s being done again.”

The repeal of the AEA is, to Honda, a redress-level legal task tailor-made for the JACL. “This is an American issue. It’s not party, and it’s dividing our country, and JACL can be the agent of bringing this all together.”

Plea to the President

With his time to speak having run over, Honda addressed his next comment to JACL National Board President Larry Oda. “Mr. President, perhaps, maybe at this time, before we adjourn that we have an emergency meeting of the board and have an emergency resolution directing the chapters to move forward on this issue, as we did on HR 442.”

Ebright augmented Honda’s plea. “I really want to underscore the representative’s point that repeal is the path forward, it’s the only path forward. In wartime, this law is in excess, right? We saw what happened in WWII. We saw how unjust it was, and that’s because it’s not 1798. There are plenty of tools that the government has to keep us safe in wartime. Interning people based on where they were born, what they look like, is not, should not, cannot be one of those tools. And what we now see is that in peacetime, this law is drafted broadly enough that it is subject to abuse.”

Honda, for his part, understands that his quest to have the AEA repealed won’t happen in this session of Congress. It may not happen in his lifetime. But the status quo for repeal has progressed compared to a when he wrote a letter to the editor five years ago on the AEA repeal that appeared in the March 6, 2020, Pacific Citizen (see tinyurl.com/432yk59p). There was no Neighbors Not Enemies Act back then. In other words, like redress, it’s a process that will take time and many twists and many turns.

“It’s been on the books in 1798. So, make it happen in this generation,” Honda said. “That’s why it’s important to vote and to make things happen.”