Dem mayor cites Japanese internment camps in defense of refusing refugees

They also called on Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe to refuse the resettlement of Syrian refugees for that same period.

Bowers, however, is not alone in wanting to cut off assistance to refugees.

Mayor David Bowers said in a statement Wednesday that relocation efforts by governmental and non-governmental agencies should be stopped “until these serious hostilities and atrocities end” or are brought under control.

It was this last part that infuriated the Clinton campaign.

The internment camps – now considered illegal – are widely considered to be an embarrassing period in USA history.

“The internment (not a “sequester”) was not of Japanese “foreign nationals”, but of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were US citizens”, Takei writes.

Bowers has previously announced that he is not running for re-election next year.

Bowers’ citing of wartime internment drew a furious response from Twitter users.

“We need to activate the Tennessee National Guard and stop them from coming into the state by whatever means we can”, he said, according to a report in the Tennessean. “We regret that we succumbed to fear”.

He adds: “There never was any proven incident of espionage or sabotage from the suspected “enemies” then, just as there has been no act of terrorism from any of the 1,854 Syrian refugees the US already has accepted”.

“Our collective conscience has been shaken by both the refugee crisis resulting from the ongoing conflict in Syria and the terrorist attacks across the world”, the board said in a statement.

More than half of the 50 USA governors – all but one a member of the GOP – as well as most of the Republican presidential field have come out against President Barack Obama’s plan to resettle a few 10,000 Syrian refugees next year.

“States have absolutely no legal authority to bar someone who is granted refugee status from entering their state, since it’s federal law that determines whether someone is a refugee”, Greg Chen, director of advocacy at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told Business Insider on Monday. DeBlasio made a different comparison to World War II, noting that many Americans did not want to accept European Jews fleeing Hitler in the 1940s.

“We are not going to make that mistake in our time”, DeBlasio said during a news conference.