Service at the station began on June 22, 2003 as part of the BART San Mateo County Extension project that extended BART service southward from Colma to Millbrae and San Francisco International Airport.

The land for the station was acquired from the neighboring shopping center through eminent domain proceedings that started in 1999; after the two-year lawsuit, BART paid $34 million as a settlement in 2001 to the four corporations who jointly owned the mall property.

[3]: 22–23  The City of San Bruno requested the new station be named Tanforan Park after the racetrack and later mall that occupied the site, but BART officials, sensitive to the past history of Tanforan as an Assembly Center for Japanese-American citizens during World War II and the recent lawsuit, declined the request in 2002.

TACMC was formed in March 2012 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Tanforan Assembly Center by staging an exhibition of photographs by Dorothea Lange and Paul Kitagaki Jr. covering the Internment of Japanese Americans following the issuance of Executive Order 9066.

When complete, the new memorial will include a bronze statue depicting Hiroko and Miyuki Mochida of Hayward, inspired by one of Lange's photographs from 1942.