The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation was pleased and grateful when Senator Cynthia Lummis nominated us the last two years for the National Medal from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. We were finalists last year and hope to win this year.
If that happens, we will join two accomplished Wyoming institutions—the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody and the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo—as recipients of this honor.
Those are among the many reasons why we are deeply concerned by the executive order that calls for the elimination of “the non-statutory components and functions” of the IMLS and several other federal agencies.
Multiple Wyoming institutions have benefited from IMLS support. They include the Wyoming State Library, Jackson Hole Children’s Museum, Eastern Shoshone Tribe, and the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center.
Such funding supports local jobs and businesses, as visitors to these institutions pay admission fees, eat in Wyoming restaurants and shop in our stores. They help make the University of Wyoming the thriving educational beacon it is for all state residents.
We are also deeply concerned about the recent invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to combat the activities of immigrants allegedly affiliated with Venezuelan gangs. This is the only time the 229-year-old law has been used during peacetime. We believe there are multiple other legal avenues to use to fight crime connected with these immigrants, regardless of their status.
The Alien Enemies Act has a troubled history for the Japanese American community. It was used shortly after the Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to justify the incarceration of Japanese, German and Italian nationals living in the United States. Even before the establishment of Heart Mountain and 9 other “War Relocation Authority” camps, thousands of Japanese immigrants were whisked into a series of Department of Justice camps around the country based solely on their national origin. The vast majority of the imprisoned were men, who were leaders of the Japanese American community. They were ineligible for citizenship, because of the laws in effect at that time. Their lack of citizenship was one reason to justify their incarceration.
The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation exists only because the government at the time determined that people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, were dangerous and potential saboteurs and spies. None was ever charged or convicted of such crimes, yet most of them lost their homes and businesses because of these false accusations. The misuse of the Alien Enemies Act at that time makes us particularly sensitive to any future abuse of the law.
That is why we urge the members of our state delegation—Senator Lummis and Senator John Barrasso and Representative Harriet Hageman—to come to the aid of the Wyoming institutions that serve our state through help from the IMLS. These institutions have shown they have the stature and ability to make positive contributions to our state. We also seek their help in limiting, if not stopping entirely, the use of the Alien Enemies Act.