Dem mayor cites Japanese internment camps in defense of refusing refugees

The Democratic mayor of Roanoke, Va., cited World War II-era Japanese internment camps in his calls to “suspend and delay” the relocation of Syrian refugees to his city.

“I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then,” Mayor David Bowers said in a statement on Wednesday, according to The Roanoke Times.

{mosads}“I am convinced that it is presently imprudent to assist in the relocation of Syrian refugees to our part of Virginia,” he added.

Bowers said Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris and the bombing of a Russian passenger plane last month should make the U.S. hesitant to open its borders. 

“Thus, today, I’m requesting that all Roanoke Valley governments and non-governmental agencies suspend and delay any further Syrian refugee assistance until these serious hostilities and atrocities end, or at the very least until regarded as under control by U.S. authorities, and normalcy is restored,” he said.

Bowers, who announced last week that he will not seek reelection next year, is breaking with his party by resisting the White House’s plan to relocate 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. this year. 

Thirty-one governors, including one Democrat, have opposed the move, pointing to the Paris attacks in which it’s suspected that at least one of the assailants entered the country posing as a migrant.

The internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans between 1942 and 1946 came about after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

In 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush issued an apology and reparations to survivors of the camps.

Bowers has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and sits on the Democratic front-runner’s Virginia Leadership Council, according to the Times.

The Clinton campaign denounced Bowers’ comments in a statement to the Washington Post on Wednesday.

“The internment of people of Japanese descent is a dark cloud on our nation’s history and to suggest that it is anything but a horrible moment in our past is outrageous,” Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin said.

Updated at 6:00 p.m.