[7] The Crystal City Internment Camp was one of the primary confinement facilities in the United States for families during World War II.

[9] Crystal City, named after the town it neighbors and located 110 miles (180 km) south of San Antonio, was one of the largest camps in Texas.

The FSA camp was turned over to the INS to allow these so-called "enemy aliens" to be reunited with their wives and children, and the first group of 35 German families arrived on December 12, 1942.

The majority of Crystal City's Latin American population was transported to Germany and Japan at the end of the war, although several hundred Japanese Peruvians were allowed to remain in the U.S. after a two-year legal battle.

The 234 Latin American Germans had been deported from Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, in addition to a few from Haiti.

[4] The Crystal City camp also held Japanese and German Americans who previously lived in many different parts of the United States.

[6] Additional Japanese Americans were transported by train from western detention facilities and WRA camps in the following months.

[4][6] Most of the Japanese-American incarcerees were transported from the West Coast, while the German Americans were brought from numerous locations throughout the United States.

[4] The idea of family internment was a new concept proposed with regards to the detention of German and Japanese aliens in World War II.

[3] Almost all of the children held at the Crystal City internment camp were native-born American citizens whose parents were alien non-citizens.

[4] The American schools were then closed on June 28, 1946, but only 16 Japanese students still remained in Crystal City with their parents.

Crystal City remained open, however, to house Japanese Peruvians who had refused to participate in the government's repatriation program.

[10] With the help of civil rights attorney Wayne M. Collins, 364 internees filed a lawsuit and, after two years, obtained parole to work at Seabrook Farms in New Jersey.