During World War II, the legal basis for this detention was under Presidential Proclamation 2526, made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act.

[1] With the U.S. entry into World War I after Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, German nationals were automatically classified as enemy aliens.

Two of four main World War I-era internment camps were located in Hot Springs, North Carolina, and Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.

[2] Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer wrote that "All aliens interned by the government are regarded as enemies, and their property is treated accordingly."

In the early 21st century, Congress considered legislation to study treatment of European Americans during WWII, but it did not pass the House of Representatives.

President Woodrow Wilson issued two sets of regulations on April 6, 1917, and November 16, 1917, imposing restrictions on German-born male residents of the United States over the age of 14.

[5] Some 250,000 people in that category were required to register at their local post office, to carry their registration card at all times, and to report any change of address or employment.

[9] After being falsely accused by unscrupulous newspaper editor John R. Rathom of knowingly refusing a request to play The Star Spangled Banner, the BSO's conductor, Karl Muck, also spent more than a year interned at Fort Oglethorpe, as did Ernst Kunwald, the music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

[16] Before the U.S. entered the war, several Imperial German Navy vessels were docked in U.S. ports; officials ordered them to leave within 24 hours or submit to detention.

In December 1914 the German auxiliary cruiser Cormoran, pursued by the Imperial Japanese Navy, tried to take on provisions and refuel in Guam.

[18] The crews of the cruiser Geier and an accompanying supply ship, which sought refuge from the Imperial Japanese Navy in Honolulu in November 1914, were similarly interned, becoming POWs when the US entered the war.

[19] Several hundred men on two other German cruisers, the Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Kronprinz Wilhelm, unwilling to face certain destruction by the Royal Navy in the Atlantic, lived for several years on their ships in various Virginia ports and frequently enjoyed shore leave.

The large number of German Americans of recent connection to Germany, and their resulting political and economical influence, have been considered the reason they were spared large-scale relocation and internment.

[citation needed] Shortly after the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, some 1,260 German nationals were detained and arrested, as the government had been watching them.

During the early years of the war, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had drafted a list of Germans in fifteen Latin American countries whom it suspected of subversive activities.

[36][citation needed] The TRACES Center for History and Culture, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, travels the United States in a "bus-eum" to educate citizens about treatment of foreign nationals in the U.S. during World War II.

[37] Legislation was introduced in the United States Congress in 2001 to create an independent commission to review government policies on European enemy ethnic groups during the war.

This bill created an independent commission to review U.S. government policies directed against German and Italian aliens during World War II in the U.S. and Latin America.