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Geronimo and the Japanese were imprisoned there. Now Fort Sill will hold migrant children — again.

Record numbers of unaccompanied children from Central America have crossed the border in recent months. So many that the Office of Refugee Resettlement has been scrambling to find housing for them.

On Tuesday, the agency announced it has chosen a military base as a temporary shelter: Fort Sill in Oklahoma, which was used during World War II as an internment camp for Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants. Before that, it was the longtime prison for Apache leader Geronimo.

The Trump administration has been under fire for its treatment of migrant children, drawing comparisons to the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants in the 1940s. Yale historian Joanne Freeman said on Twitter: “It feels as though history can’t yell any louder than this.”

This isn’t the first time that Fort Sill has been used this way, though. During the Obama presidency, unaccompanied children were housed there for four months. At the time, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) blamed Obama’s “failed immigration policies," saying, “It is alarming to have 1,200 children in a military Installation.”

In fact, Fort Sill has a long history of holding children.

It was established in 1869 for U.S. soldiers fighting Native Americans. In 1894, eight years after Apache leader Geronimo had surrendered, he was transferred to Fort Sill. He was joined by nearly 400 other Apaches, including women and children. They could move freely inside Fort Sill’s large area, and some, including Geronimo, were allowed to leave to perform in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. But they were still considered prisoners of war.

Geronimo died of pneumonia at Fort Sill in 1909, and was buried there in the Apache Prisoner of War Cemetery. The remaining prisoners and their descendants were finally freed in 1914.

In 1942, the fort became a prison once again, as about 350 Japanese nationals living in the United States, called Issei, were sent there, according to the National Park Service.

Conditions were harsh. The prisoners lived in tents, which they struggled to keep upright during wind storms. In the summer, there was no shade, and temperatures reached triple digits. And on May 12, 1942, a man named Kensaburo Oshima was killed by military guards.

Read entire article at Washington Post