CIVIL LIBERTIES – 1942 ALL OVER AGAIN?

americanprogressaction.org
CIVIL LIBERTIES – 1942 ALL OVER AGAIN?

Members of a Census Bureau advisory board panel yesterday told top officials that the Census Bureau's decision “to give to the Department of Homeland Security data that identified populations of Arab-Americans was the modern-day equivalent of its pinpointing Japanese-American communities when internment camps were opened during World War II.” Barry Steinhardt, a civil liberties lawyer and member of the panel, charged, "This for the Arab-American community is 1942. Thousands of Arab-Americans have been rounded up and deported." Charles Louis Kincannon, the Census Bureau director, acknowledged that even if handing that information to the DHS broke no laws, “the agency had undermined public trust, potentially discouraging Arab-Americans or other minority groups from filling out future census forms.”