Have Idaho voters learned lessons from Minidoka? Doesn’t seem like it | Opinion

Drive 20 miles to the northeast of Twin Falls, and you will discover what is one of the most reprehensible parts of Idaho’s past: the Minidoka War Relocation Center. An example of what many retroactively deem a “concentration camp,” the Minidoka site began operations in August 1942, and roughly 13,000 Japanese Americans spent time there.

Though internment camps are commonly defended as a justifiable reaction to the war, no Japanese Americans during WWII were found to have ties to military espionage as part of the Japanese Empire. Especially at Minidoka, adults and children at the camps were coerced — after having their property seized — into doing closely monitored, poorly remunerated agricultural labor. Minidoka is a blight on our state’s history.

But Idaho has sincerely tried to make up for Minidoka. Now, Minidoka is a National Historic Site where visitors can learn about the brutal conditions and deprivations of those who interned there.

Despite how much those in Idaho have worked to discuss the site publicly, the voting habits of our populace reveal that few have learned lessons from Minidoka. The Trump administration — which the majority of people here voted into power — has set up detention centers en masse to stall a threat it sees in immigrants to this country. Detention centers are similar to internment camps in that both incarcerate people primarily based on racial profiling and because such spaces inhumanly treat those within them.

Detention centers are similar to relocation camps because both places are filled with those whom the government has racially profiled. Many have been held in these centers for months. Reuters notes that, as of February 27, 2026, merely 29% of those in ICE detention centers have criminal convictions. The primary people who are kept in such facilities are Hispanics, and the Supreme Court has ruled that federal immigration enforcement agents can use race and languages spoken to detain people.

Racial prejudice is the primary reason why, in total, 120,000 Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps. Robert C. Sims discusses this in the book An “Eye for Injustice.”

“Studies have proven that anti-Japanese groups influenced the decision to remove all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast,” he wrote.

Both ICE detention centers and Japanese internment camps also have histories of inhumanely treating their inhabitants. Last year was one of ICE’s deadliest years as 32 people died while the agency detained them. The Human Rights Watch group observes that, after the presidency switched from Biden to Trump, there was a quality of life change for those in such centers: “Some were … shackled for prolonged periods on buses without food, water, or functioning toilets; there was extreme overcrowding in freezing holding cells where detainees were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors...and many were denied access to basic hygiene and medical care.”

Internment camps also featured inhumane conditions. As The Washington Post reports, those in the camp barracks had little to defend themselves against inclement weather: “Walls covered in tar paper did little to insulate against the heat of Arizona deserts or freezing Wyoming winters.”

At our own Minidoka, Sims writes that, upon first arrival to the camp, those to be interned found “a camp still under construction. There was not hot running water; the sewage system had not been installed.”

Guard towers, wilderness and barbed wire stopped people in internment camps from leaving in the same way that, say, the wildlife and guards at the detention center “Alligator Alcatraz” are supposed to deter detainees from escaping.

Idaho has done a great job of discussing its history of racism toward the Japanese and its role in internment. But modern Idahoans should learn from their past mistakes and try to vote against a party that supports a modern form of internment camp.

Edward Dorey is a Boise State alum with an interest in Idahoan history and politics. He has lived in the state for seven years.