Aryana Noroozi
Community members of all ages gathered outside the Cheech Museum in Downtown Riverside for an ICE Out of Riversideprotest and rally hosted by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of Riverside on March 22. The rally commemorated the 80th anniversary of the closure of Tule Lake, the last Japanese internment camp in California, while raising awareness of history repeating itself as racism, fear and abuses of power are currently being deployed on a national level.
Framed by the historic facades along Mission Inn Avenue, the event blended performance, memory, and political urgency. TaikoMix, a Riverside‑based Japanese drumming ensemble, performed a series of high‑energy pieces that pulled the crowd in through call‑and‑response and clapping. The program was billed as a reflection on “collective struggle,” and the afternoon traced a line from the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans to contemporary struggles over immigration, civil liberties, and who is allowed to fully belong in this country.
During the event, Congressman Mark Takano warned that the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II parallels today’s immigration policies, from racial profiling to what he called “Kavanaugh Stops.” Takano’s own family – his father, grandparents, and extended family – were incarcerated at the Tule Lake camp. He emphasized that they were among the 120,000 plus Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants forced into camps and denied basic legal protections.
“None of the folks that were put into these incarceration camps were given due process of law,” he said. “Their rights under our Constitution, especially the 14th Amendment, which says that no person shall be denied life, liberty or property except for due process of the law. None were charged with any crimes, none were given any trials, none were given an opportunity for habeas corpus.” Takano referenced Nazi Germany’s “papers, please” policy, where residents were constantly required to produce identification. “No one in America should have to carry a passport in their own country to prove that they’re in the right place,” he said.
His testimony offered both warning and invitation: to remember the American families once forced into internment camps, to recognize our neighbors now living in fear of detention, and to decide what kind of community this region will be for the next generation.
