The law used against brown people was originally created to target white people.
July 6, 1798: President John Adams signed the Alien Enemies Act into law.
Long before Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, or deportation raids and detention centers for Latino immigrants, there was the French.
In 1798, during the later stages of the French Revolution and growing tensions between the United States and revolutionary France, the U.S. government passed a series of laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The most enduring of them was the Alien Enemies Act — a sweeping law that allowed the president to arrest, detain, or deport any non-citizen male over the age of 14 from a nation the United States was at war with. No trial required.
Unlike the other Alien and Sedition Acts, this provision faced relatively little opposition from the Democratic-Republicans and remained on the books after the others expired.
During the French Revolution, their king was executed in 1793. Fearing their own people might revolt, the American government passed the Alien Enemies Act — just in case.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
John Adams, the second president of the United States. He signed the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 into law. This law is that old.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Representatives Matthew Lyon (Republican) and Roger Griswold (Federalist) got into a full blown fistfight over who posed the bigger threat: the French or the British.
Courtesy of the National Archives & Records Administration
The Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. That conflict saw President Madison invoke the Alien Enemies Act against British nationals living in the United States.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
German immigrants about to be deported in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1919. Their only crime: being from a country the U.S. was at war with.
Courtesy of Library of Congress
German immigrants incarcerated at Fort Douglas, Utah, during World War I. Over 2,000 German born civilians were arrested under the Alien Enemies Act.
Fear of Other White People
The law was rooted in fear. Fear of foreign ideas. Fear of the “wrong” people having influence.
Fear that loyalty to America had to be proven — or punished.
After the Quasi-War with France ended in 1800, the law remained largely dormant for years. But it would resurface whenever the United States entered major wars.
First, President James Madison invoked the act during the War of 1812, targeting British nationals living in the United States.
Then, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson invoked the act against nationals of the Central Powers, including Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria.
World War II
Then things shifted during WWII.
Fear again swept the country after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Alien Enemies Act was invoked against thousands of Japanese, German, and Italian nationals living in the United States. At the same time, a much broader policy unfolded.
It didn’t matter if they were under 14. It didn’t matter if they were World War I veterans. It didn’t matter if they were born in the United States. They were removed without charges, without trials, and imprisoned in American concentration camps.
Decades later, the U.S. government formally acknowledged the injustice when the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 issued an apology and provided reparations.
Photography by Dorothea Lange
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 authorized detention of non-citizens from enemy nations, but the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans extended far beyond that.
President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 to formally apologize for the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans and acknowledged it as a grave injustice.
Courtesy of The White House
Inside a modern U.S. detention facility. More than two centuries after its passage, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 remains on the books as a law presidents may invoke.
Over 200 Years Later
The Alien Enemies Act has never been repealed. It still exists in U.S. law today. Over the centuries it has been revived again and again during moments of fear and war, often targeting immigrants from countries labeled hostile to the United States.
In March 2025, President Donald Trump invoked the act in a proclamation describing an alleged “invasion” by the Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua.
More than two centuries after it was written, the law remains a powerful wartime authority in the hands of the executive branch.
A law originally created to control white European immigrants still sits on the books today. What we choose to do with it — and who it is used against — remains a question for every generation.