Japanese American survivors of World War II prison camps are leading a movement to stop the Trump administration from incarcerating immigrant children and families.

But, Jennifer Nakamoto, CEO of the Nakamoto Group, has turned her back on her community and history. Instead, she chooses to profit off the Trump administration’s mass incarceration of immigrant families.

The Nakamoto Group is raking in profits under the guise of inspecting ICE facilities for safety and cleanliness. But instead of holding ICE accountable, the Nakamoto Group has contributed to the deaths of multiple people held in ICE detention.

SIGN ON TO END NAKAMOTO’S ICE CONTRACT.

ICE’s own death reviews concluded that substandard medical care was a contributing factor in the patients’ deaths. But, Nakamoto’s inspections before and after the deaths failed to acknowledge and often dismissed violations of ICE medical standards. They’ve helped ICE and the private prisons sweep the agency’s own death review findings under the rug. [1]            

The Nakamoto Group has a long record of signing off on deadly conditions. In 2012, Nakamoto inspectors gave Eloy Detention Center in Arizona a satisfactory rating on suicidal prevention. Three years later, Eloy had not even adopted a written suicide prevention plan, and a 31-year-old man named Jose de Jesus Deniz-Sahagun committed suicide in his cell after Eloy’s staff decided he was not an acute suicide risk. [2]

When Congress investigated the company, Jennifer Nakamoto tried to brush off criticism by writing a letter about how she was being discriminated against as “a hard-working minority woman.” She wrote extensively of her family being “forced into internment camps” and her mother who “was born in a Japanese internment camp.” [4] Her manipulative use of her family history to excuse her actions is despicable.

Had Nakamoto condemned the safety of the camps, they could have saved the lives of people who died and be on the right side of history. But instead, Jennifer Nakamoto and her company have chosen to use our collective trauma to rinse the blood from their hands.

ICE imprisons more than 55,000 people across the country on a daily basis. They use Nakamoto’s inspections to determine whether they’ll maintain or cancel contracts with private prisons and jails. Those inspections may soon also permit ICE to self-certify its prisons as safe for children.

On September 26, Jennifer Nakamoto will testify on the oversight of ICE detention facilities. [5] Nakamoto and her company cannot be permitted to continue rubber-stamping dangerous facilities that are killing immigrants and refugees.

As Japanese Americans, allies and co-conspirators, we call on Jennifer Nakamoto to:

• Meet in person with Japanese American community leaders and leaders in impacted communities to hear the harm she has caused

• Donate the profits from her detention facility inspections to Detention Watch Network which is working to shut down these places of abuse

• Write a public apology for her twisted use of Japanese American history to defend her complicity

• Withdraw her company’s pending bid to continue its ICE inspection contract, which is up for renewal in September

It is offensive to use the story of Japanese American incarceration to justify her work. As members of the Japanese American community and as allies and co-conspirators, we denounce her profiteering and blame-shifting.

Co-Sponsor:

Tsuru for Solidarity

[1] Fatal Neglect: How ICE Ignores Deaths in Detention

[2] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/07/15/the-strange-death-of-jose-de-jesus

[2] https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2018-06/OIG-18-67-Jun18.pdf

[4] Congressional Response Letter from Nakamoto Group

[5] https://homeland.house.gov/oversight-of-ice-detention-facilities-is-dhs-doing-enough