On Wednesday, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) posted a video to social media to decry the Trump Administration's deportation of illegal immigrants to El Salvador prisons.
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00:00My parents and grandparents were forced from their homes, stripped of their dignity, and imprisoned behind barbed wire by the U.S. government during World War II.
00:10They were given no trials, no due process.
00:13They were imprisoned simply because they were of Japanese ancestry.
00:19And now, I'm watching history repeat itself.
00:22Hundreds of people in America have been ripped from their homes and sent to a notorious prison in a foreign country, El Salvador, with no charges, no trial, and no due process.
00:35A 60 Minutes investigation found that three quarters of them had no criminal record whatsoever.
00:41Trump has been using the Alien Enemies Act, a centuries-old law which was used against my own family, to round up people without due process and send them to a foreign prison.
00:53One of them is Andri Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist with no criminal record.
01:01But he has a few tattoos and suddenly he's labeled as a gang member.
01:06Another is Kilmer Obrego-Garcia, whose deportation was an administrative error.
01:14Almost immediately, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that Trump had to facilitate the return of Obrego-Garcia to America.
01:23But the Trump administration defied the Supreme Court's ruling and claimed that they were powerless.
01:29Donald Trump paid El Salvador's dictatorial ruler, President Bukele, $6 million to lock these people away in the first place.
01:39Who really believes that Donald Trump has no power to bring these people back?
01:44This is just a clever, cute way to get around due process rights.
01:49This isn't just cruelty.
01:51It's a constitutional crisis.
01:53It's stage one cancer on our democracy.
01:55And that's why this court issued an emergency order to prevent any more deportations like this.
02:02They don't trust this administration.
02:04Disappearing people without due process affects all of us.
02:07We can't let Trump have this power.
02:09Trump is testing his power, so only time will tell what he will do.
02:13But no matter what, I'm not backing down from the fight, and neither should you.
02:18If we stay silent, we're complicit.
02:20If we allow fear to replace the rule of law, we all lose.
02:26I know what happens when that line is crossed.
02:28My family has lived it.
02:30And I will not stand by and allow that to happen again.