When I was little, the U.S. military came to our home at gunpoint and took me and my family away. We were imprisoned for years in barbed wire camps simply because we were Japanese American. I have spent my life telling that story, hoping it would never be repeated.

But something very much like it is happening again.

People are being rounded up and crammed into a hastily constructed camp of plastic tents and cages. They are being forced to endure unlivable conditions, all because they weren’t born in this country. Most have no criminal records. All of them deserve a right to a hearing and to due process of law.

I know that pain. I know what it is to be abandoned by your country. We cannot look away. We cannot be silent.

Right now, we live in a time of resistance. It is a political act to add your voice, even to a petition like this one. Please join me in signing this to demand the U.S. federal government and Florida governments shut down Alligator Alcatraz immediately. They must hear from us in overwhelming numbers.

Thank you. Your name here means so much to those of us who have lived through this before and to those who are living through it now.

— Uncle George