George Takei Says America is Running Concentration Camps

"George Takei" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Veteran Star Trek actor George Takei is well-known for being outspoken about political topics, and he recently weighed in on one of the most hot-button issues in recent weeks.

A story from CBS News explains that Takei tweeted his support for US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who herself courted controversy by saying on Instagram, "The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are."

The controversy over American concentration camps arose last week from an announcement by The Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. In the announcement, the ORR said that it plans to detain as many as 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children in makeshift housing on the Fort Sill Army installation in Oklahoma. Media outlets earlier this week wrestled with whether it was correct to call these facilities “concentration camps”.

Shortly after Ocasio-Cortez’s live video on June 18th, Takei tweeted: “I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.”

During World War II, Fort Sill was used as a Japanese Internment camp, similar to the ones George Takei was held in as a child.