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George Takei slams Trump's border policy, 'worse' than Japanese internment camp

"Star Trek" actor George Takei has long been a vocal social activist following his childhood spent in a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II.

But Takei, 81, is today filled with "rage" watching President Trump's "zero tolerance" border policy which has separated nearly 2,000 children from their parents.

"At least during the internment, when I was just 5 years old, I was not taken from my parents," Takei wrote in an op-ed for ForeignPolicy.com. "My family was sent to a racetrack for several weeks to live in a horse stall, but at least we had each other."

"At least during the internment, we remained a family, and I credit that alone for keeping the scars of our unjust imprisonment from deepening on my soul," Takei wrote.

The Japanese-American actor echoed the sentiments made by former first lady Laura Bush, wife of Republican president George W. Bush, who penned an op-ed piece for The Washington Post after she saw pictures of children in fenced facilities away from their parents.

“These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history,” Bush wrote.

Takei, who brought his interment story as the musical "Allegiance" to Broadway in 2015, said the emotional scars are deeper for innocent children left to fend for themselves.

That's why the current situation is even "worse in one core, horrifying way" than the internment, he says.

"At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents. We were not pulled screaming from our mothers’ arms. We were not left to change the diapers of younger children by ourselves."

"I cannot for a moment imagine what my childhood would have been like had I been thrown into a camp without my parents," he wrote. "That this is happening today fills me with both rage and grief: rage toward a failed political leadership who appear to have lost even their most basic humanity, and a profound grief for the families affected."