Senate Democrats passed a resolution Wednesday condemning President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to justify mass deportations. 

The resolution, sponsored by Sens. Julie Gonzales of Denver and Iman Jodeh of Aurora, marks the 83rd anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which used the Alien Enemies Act to authorize the government to forcibly relocate Japanese-Americans to internment camps, including Amache in Colorado. Passed in 1798, the Alien Enemies Act allows the president to order for the restraint of citizens deemed a “threat to national security.” The act is one of four Alien and Sedition Acts passed in 1798; all but the Alien Enemies Act have been revoked.

The resolution passed on a party line vote.

According to Gonzales, nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans were interned at 10 camps across the country. An estimated 70,000 of them were U.S. citizens.

In his inauguration speech last month, Trump said he planned to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to direct the government to use “the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement” to eliminate the presence of “all foreign gangs and criminal networks” in the country.

That same day, Trump signed an executive order designating cartels and transnational gangs as terrorist organizations. The order also includes a measure requiring the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to make a plan to implement the Alien Enemies Act, should the president choose to invoke it. 

During a campaign stop in Aurora last fall, Trump suggested using the Alien Enemies Act as part of his plan to “target and dismantle every migrant 10 criminal network operating on American soil,” which he called Operation Aurora. 

“In 1942, media, the president, and even the courts said, ‘this is OK to do’, and it wasn’t until President Reagan that there was a formal apology issued,” said Gonzales of the Japanese internment camps. “Are we gonna wait that long to denounce the actions of the Trump administration in his first month in office? I hope not.”

The resolution notes that the United States is not currently at war, which is a requirement for authorizing the Alien Enemies Act. 

Jodeh and Sen. Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, spoke of the impact Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants has had on their districts, which are some of the most diverse in the nation. 

“I have a commitment to not only my constituents, but to the people of Aurora, and even broader, to the people of Colorado to make sure that they do not feel threatened,” said Jodeh, whose parents immigrated from Palestine nearly 50 years ago. 

“While I am an American citizen and my family’s American citizens, my community was threatened,” she said. “I felt threatened.”

The October Trump rally took place in Weissman’s district, 15 minutes from his house. He urged his colleagues to learn from the country’s past and ensure it’s not repeated. 

“Let’s honor the suffering of tens of thousands of fellow Americans and the multigenerational suffering that persists,” he said. “Language matters. Things like the round up in the 40s of Japanese-American citizens don’t come from nowhere.”

The resolution called on Gov. Jared Polis to voice his support for Colorado’s immigrant community and for the state’s congressional delegation to sign on to U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-HI’s Neighbors Not Enemies Act, which repeals the Alien Enemies Act, and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s equivalent bill in the House. 

Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, said he would love to support the resolution, but he was unable to reach a compromise with the sponsors on its language.

“Unfortunately, in this moment, with the vagaries of our process, time precludes the opportunity for the precision and language necessary to get to that yes,” he said. 

Lundeen called Executive Order 9066 a “great and horrific injustice”.

“It’s a horrible chapter in our history, and only acknowledged,” he said. “It cannot be corrected.”

Lundeen said the media is largely “hostile” toward Trump’s executive orders, as it is their job to hold those in power accountable for their actions. 

“We may never forget the errors of our past, and we must learn from them, and we should apply them to the circumstances in which we find ourselves,” he said. “I appreciate the sponsors bringing this. I appreciate even more deeply the fact that we were, in less than 24 hours, able to engage in a conversation that is a meaningful beginning of what might have ultimately turned this particular resolution into something that I not only would have voted yes on, but would’ve cosponsored.”