Mayor David Bowers of Roanoke cites draconian measure after Pearl Harbor in 1941, saying ‘the threat to Americans from Isis now is just as real and serious’

The mayor of Roanoke, Virginia, has invoked President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to place Japanese Americans in internment camps during the second world war as a way to justify keeping Syrian refugees out of the US.

“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 Americans from Isis now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then,” Mayor David Bowers said in a statement released on Wednesday.

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Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Roosevelt incarcerated at least 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in camps across the US. About two-thirds of those forced to relocate to internment camps were US citizens.

Bowers’ reference to the internment camps is in contrast to that of Governor Jay Inslee of Washington, who on Wednesday morning cited them as a blight in US history in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep. During the interview, Inslee said the US should accept Syrian refugees into the country and not “succumb to fear” like the country did in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.

“We regret that. We regret that we succumbed to fear,” Inslee said. “We regret that we lost moorage for who we were as a country. We shouldn’t do that right now.”

Bowers, however, is not alone in wanting to cut off assistance to refugees.

The mayor joins a growing throng of governors and lawmakers who are moving to block US acceptance of Syrian refugees in the wake of terrorist attacks on Paris that left 129 dead. At least 25 states have expressed resistance to accepting refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war, and Republicans in Congress are preparing legislation that threatens to suspend a US refugee program for Syrians.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Roanoke, Virginia: Syrian refugees not welcome, according to Mayor David Bowers. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

The mayor requested 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 the US authorities, and normalcy is restored”.



Bowers cited recent international attacks – the Paris attacks, the 224 dead on a Russian passenger jet leaving Egypt and a threat from extremist militants vowing to attack Washington – as reasons for not assisting refugees.



Despite the intensity of attacks in the past two weeks, counter-terrorism experts said refugees, who have to undergo a 12-to-18-month screening process to enter the US, are unlikely to be a threat.