Trump admin slams ACLU for comparing ICE center to Japanese internment camp: 'Deranged and lazy'

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) invoked President Franklin Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as the Trump administration was set to open a massive detention center at Fort Bliss in Texas on Monday.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) torched the comparison, with a top official left wondering why an organization with such a name "care[s] more about illegal aliens than U.S. citizens," in comments to Fox News Digital.

"Comparisons of illegal alien detention centers to internment camps used during World War II are deranged and lazy. The ACLU's smears against our brave ICE law enforcement are no doubt contributing to the more than 1,000% increase in assaults against them," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

"[The ACLU] should change their name. The facts are ICE is targeting the worst of the worst-including murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, and rapists. 70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or have pending charges in the U.S. - that doesn't even include known or suspected terrorists, foreign gang members, convictions for violent crimes in foreign countries, or INTERPOL notices."

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On Sunday, before Fort Bliss' "Camp East Montana" center was to open at the historically pivotal military base near the U.S.-Mexico and New Mexico borders, the ACLU's regional affiliates released a joint statement calling the move "another shameful chapter" in the base's history.

"The renewed use of this base to detain immigrants and stage deportations comes as the Trump administration continues to misuse military resources to deport long-standing residents and other immigrants," the release read, calling the president's mass-deportation agenda "dystopian."

"President Trump's use of Fort Bliss for the nation's largest immigrant detention site is cruel and a reminder of a shameful detention legacy," added Sarah Mehta, a top official in the ACLU's Equality Division - who also called on Congress to stop DHS' agenda.

"Thousands of people, including our neighbors and loved ones, will be torn from their communities while this administration enlists the military to rubberstamp its abusive agenda."

Fort Bliss - named after the son-in-law of Mexican-American War hero and later President Zachary Taylor - also held a small number of German and Italian immigrants during World War II.

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In 1942, Roosevelt initiated an executive order targeting Americans descended from countries representing the Axis powers. The Democrat ushered in the incarceration of about 120,000 Japanese-Americans and smaller numbers of Italian and German descendants.

While Fort Bliss was not a main "internment camp," it did hold small numbers of interred U.S. citizens, including as many as 70 "Issei," or first-generation Japanese-Americans living along the Pacific Coast.

After the war, German scientist Wernher von Braun - a former Untersturmführer in the S.S. -- and other former Axis power-players worked there with the Americans to develop what eventually became the U.S. Space Program, now run by NASA.

Considered a 38,000-soldier "megabase," it has also been a crucial staging ground for the War on Terror.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, toured Fort Bliss' new detention facility last week and told El Paso's NBC affiliate that the people who will be held there are already on their way out of the U.S.

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"These are people under final orders of deportation ... They have no legal right to be here," Cornyn said.

El Paso's member of Congress, Democrat Veronica Escobar, disagreed.

Escobar argued the $1 billion price tag would "enrich" private contractors and siphon funds from other needs in her district.

As many as 5,000 detainees will be held at Fort Bliss, according to reports.