Within a 10-foot tall barbed wire fence and between guard towers, armed immigration officers patrolled children in custody. The president declared the children and their families to be dangerous and ordered their arrest and detention. And so they were interned outside Carrizo Springs, Texas, between 1942 and 1948 at the Crystal City Alien Enemy Detention Facility.
Today, you could drive past the former site of the Crystal City internment camp without giving much pause to its history. The buildings that housed more than 4,000 Japanese, German, Italian and Latin American nationals and American citizens were converted over the years to schools, an airfield, a low-income housing project and even a whites-only country club. Now a few foundation slabs are all that remain. Blink and you might miss the historical markers across the old compound noting its significance as the nation’s largest internment camp during World War II.
