Alan Simpson enters the exhibit commemorating his and Norman Mineta’s lives in public service during the grand opening of the Mineta-Simpson Institute at Heart Mountain in July 2024.
POWELL, Wyo. — The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation issued the following statement on Jan. 21.
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We oppose the executive orders issued by President Donald Trump that authorize the use of the outmoded Alien Enemies Act to curb immigration and eliminate birthright citizenship for people born in the United States. We believe they are counter to core American values of the United States and could lead to elimination of basic rights and protections for millions of native-born Americans.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation exists because the U.S. government allowed racism and wartime hysteria to lead to the incarceration of 125,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, without evidence or trial. This incarceration, for which the U.S. government apologized in 1988, was enabled in part by the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that has long outlived whatever purpose it once had.
That is why we have joined other Japanese American groups in sup-porting the Neighbors Not Enemies Act sponsored by Sen. Mazie Hirono that would repeal the Enemies Aliens Act.
Birthright citizenship is a right rooted in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and codified in statute. It can’t be eliminated through an executive order. If the overreaching language of this order had been in place when many second-generation Japanese Americans were born, they might not have become citizens at birth and thus would have been denied the chances to serve the United States as they did in so many honor-able and patriotic ways.
We believe the rightful way to change basic citizenship and immigration policy is through Congress. That’s what Sen. Alan Simpson, one of the inspirations for our Mineta-Simpson Institute, believed and made possible through his leadership in writing the bipartisan immigration law, which was signed into law in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan.
We agree with Sen. Simpson and President Reagan.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, a Smithsonian affiliate, preserves the site where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in Wyoming from 1942 through 1945. Their stories are told within the foundation’s museum, Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, located between Cody and Powell. For more information, call the center at (307) 754-8000 or email info @heartmountain.org.