Harris ad suggests Trump will send Asians back to interment camps

In the 30-second ad, titled "Our America," the Harris campaign accuses Trump of having an "outdated vision of America" that "has no place" for Asian Americans. 

The ad "alludes to moments when Asian Americans were denied their civil rights - such as the mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit," the campaign said. 

"Protect our democracy and our communities. Vote."

The ad features men, women and children of Asian descent, including a purported Iraq War veteran giving a salute. The video is appearing on television in battleground states as well as across an array of digital channels like Meta, Snap, YouTube and radio, the Harris-Walz campaign says.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, sent around 117,000 people of Japanese descent to internment camps, the majority of whom were American citizens. 

Roosevelt issued an executive order on Feb. 19 of that year, coming two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. When the internees were taken to the camps, they could bring only what they could carry.

Nine of the camps were shut down by the end of 1945 following a Supreme Court decision, with the final camp closing in March 1946. 

After Chin left the club, the two men tracked him down at a fast-food eatery and attacked him, authorities said. Chin later died at a hospital.

"The choice for Asian American voters in this election couldn't be clearer. While Trump surrounds himself with loyalists to emulate the dictators he admires and intends to wield unchecked power to serve himself, Vice President Kamala Harris has only ever had one client: the people," Andrew Peng, the Harris-Walz 2024 Asian-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander spokesperson said in the release.