June 3, 2021

By Kathy Yep and Summer Espinoza
The Pomona Assembly Center and Japanese incarceration camps like Manzanar that came later are part of California’s shameful history of immigrant detention, expulsion and exploitation, particularly to those of color. The creation of the assembly centers can be traced to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first U.S. law that prohibited immigration based on race. It fueled future anti-Asian sentiments and ushered in a series of laws restricting and prohibiting immigration that laid the groundwork for the executive order that led to the egregious need for assembly centers. 

Between 1910 and 1940, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from more than 80 countries came through the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay for processing, detainment and sometimes interrogation. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the majority of those detained were Chinese. Among those immigrants were Kathy’s grandparents, Marie and Gim. They were minors at the time, and never saw their mothers again after they were released from Angel Island — one more example of the sad history of familial separation through immigrant detention. (read more…)