Kimchi listed in U.S. dietary guidelines for 1st time in history
Kimchi is named for the first time in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, appearing in a section that addresses fermented foods and gut health.
The Rebel Yellow - Issue #168
Japanese American survivors said this month that Trump-era immigration policies feel eerily familiar — echoing the same mindset that led to their incarceration during World War II. Their concerns resurfaced after the federal government reopened detention sites tied to that history and expanded street-level immigration arrests, some of which courts later moved to limit.
At the same time, the administration introduced visa bonds of up to $15,000 for travelers from 38 countries, making it significantly harder for families to visit or reunite in the U.S.
Tensions around race and national security also intensified after a Chinese national was charged for taking photos at a Missouri Air Force base, reigniting scrutiny over how suspicion is often racialized.
Globally, the U.S. signaled plans to withdraw from the world’s main climate treaty just as an international court began hearing genocide allegations over Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya.
Elsewhere:
Kimchi was added to U.S. dietary guidelines for the first time
Bowen Yang apologized for remarks about Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Senate campaign
Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim said a shoulder injury will not end her bid for the 2026 Winter Games
For Japanese American survivors, today’s immigration tactics feel painfully familiar
Decades after Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes during World War II, survivors and advocates say the same legal and racial logic is resurfacing in Trump’s immigration enforcement. The renewed use of wartime authorities such as the Alien Enemies Act, the expansion of racial profiling by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the opening of detention facilities at former incarceration sites have prompted comparisons to policies that once justified mass imprisonment.
Statements from senior immigration officials and White House advisers provide context for how those enforcement tactics became standard practice on the ground. Trump’s “Border czar” Tom Homan Tom Homan said ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them ... based on their physical appearance,” criteria later cited by federal judges in rulings blocking unconstitutional profiling.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told ICE leaders in May 2025 to abandon target lists and “just go out on the streets” and arrest people “right away,” including at locations such as Home Depot and 7-Eleven. Court records showed arrests surged after that directive and later declined in jurisdictions where federal judges temporarily restricted profiling-based street stops.
Scholar situates enforcement in WWII history
In a recent Op-Ed published on The Conversation, Duke University professor Anna Storti compares today’s immigration enforcement within the history of World War II-era policies that treated Japanese Americans as inherent national security threats. She argues that contemporary reliance on racial profiling follows the same rationale that once allowed the suspension of civil rights based on ancestry.
“From 1942 to 1945, the U.S. government incarcerated approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps,” Storti wrote. “To determine who was a national security threat, the government used overt racial profiling. Similar to today, when the U.S. government often misidentifies Latino Americans as noncitizens, a majority of the Japanese people incarcerated in WWII were U.S. citizens.”
Survivors see history repeating
In August 2025, the federal government opened an ICE detention center at Fort Bliss, a military installation previously used to imprison people of Japanese ancestry during World War II, heightening concern among community members who view the site as inseparable from that history.
Mary Murakami, who was imprisoned with her family at the Topaz camp in Utah as a teenager, said the similarities have been deeply unsettling. “Well, you could see why it’s an upsetting time because the same thing is happening to the immigrants now,” Murakami said in a September 2025 interview with NPR. “I never thought these thoughts would so vividly come back with another group of people in the United States.”
Japanese American activist George Takei, who was incarcerated as a child during World War II, warned in an interview with The Assignment that fear and misinformation can again be used to justify sweeping injustice. “Politicians lie and people believe that lie because there’s hysteria rampant at that time,” Takei said. “And in our time today, right now, people got swept up by a lie and elected him. And now people have regrets. People must speak out.”
Advocates urge to heed incarceration lessons
Storti argues that the tension between inclusion and exclusion has defined U.S. immigration policy for generations. While laws such as the War Brides Act of 1945 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 helped reshape the country into a more multiracial society, she contends that enforcement practices continue to sort communities by perceived worth.
“On the 80th anniversary of the War Brides Act, I’ve also noticed an alarming contradiction: Although America may be more multiracial than ever before, the U.S. immigration system remains as exclusive as it has ever been,” Storti wrote.
Over 60 Japanese American and Asian American organizations invoked that history in an amicus brief in mid-2025 urging federal courts to act as an independent constitutional check when the government relies on broad detention authority. “The courts must heed these lessons and demand the government come forward with convincing evidence, not just allegations, to support its invocation of this wartime power,” said Carl Takei, who leads the Asian Law Caucus’ community safety and civil liberties program.
Wealth-based immigration gatekeeping expands with visa bond list tripling
The Trump administration has expanded the number of countries whose passport holders must post bonds of up to $15,000 to apply to enter the U.S., bringing the total to 38 nations, with the latest additions taking effect Jan. 21.
Catch up: The State Department added a batch of seven, and then 25 more countries, to the visa bond list last week. The expansion affects three Central Asian states (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) and three South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal). Pacific island nations Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu are also affected. The bonds will be refunded if a visa is denied or when a visa holder demonstrates they have complied with the terms of their visa.
U.S. officials have defended the bonds, which range from $5,000 to $15,000, saying they ensure citizens of targeted countries do not overstay their visas. The program launched last August as a 12-month pilot targeting countries with high visa overstay rates, though actual numbers are often small. Bhutan’s 21.75% overstay rate, for instance, represented just 92 people, while Brazil’s 1.25% involved more than 21,300 overstays.
What this means: The bond expansion creates financial barriers for middle-class families seeking to visit relatives or attend events in the U.S. While Nepal’s overstay rate was just 3.12% (representing about 1,000 people), Nepali Americans now face the prospect of relatives being unable to afford the bond requirement.
The policy also adds to existing challenges. Last month, Indian H-1B visa holders remained stranded abroad after consular offices canceled interviews due to expanded social media screening, with some rescheduled into summer 2026. The expanded screening took effect Dec. 15 for all H-1B and H-4 visa applicants, reducing daily interview capacity. This stands in sharp contrast with Trump’s “gold card” program, which offers expedited U.S. residency for $1 million.
The big picture: The visa bond program represents a shift toward wealth-based immigration gatekeeping. Combined with a new $250 “visa integrity” fee from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the standard $185 application fee, the cumulative costs make U.S. travel prohibitively expensive for citizens of countries where average annual incomes fall below the bond amount. Travelers under the program must enter and exit the U.S. via only three airports, adding further costs. For Pacific travelers, the east coast airport requirements also create difficult routing that adds to travel expenses.
The bond requirement for the 25 most recently added countries takes effect Jan. 21.
Trump admin pulls U.S. out of foundational climate treaty
President Donald Trump directed the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last week, marking the only nation to exit the 1992 treaty that underpins global climate cooperation.
Multiple exits: Trump’s Jan. 7 memorandum orders American withdrawal from the UNFCCC alongside 65 other international bodies. In a statement defending the decision, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the government will not continue “expending resources, diplomatic capital, and the legitimizing weight of our participation in institutions that are irrelevant to or in conflict with our interests.” The directive also targets the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and International Solar Alliance (ISA).
