"This is downright offensive, when you talk about rounding people up, tent cities, deportations," Spencer said. "It's an extreme position, it will not work, it's extremely offensive, and it's an embarrassment."

Chaffetz disagrees.

"Enforcing immigration law in this country has nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with enforcing the law," Chaffetz said. "The plan I advocate for creating detention facilities in the Western United States was a call by the Western Governors Association."

In 2007, Homeland Security reported that 280,000 illegal immigrants apprehended in the previous three years were released because of inadequate facilities. In response, the WGA proposed construction of regional correctional facilities, paid for by the federal government, to hold immigrants convicted of crimes. The governors include Democrats Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Bill Richardson New Mexico.

"I think if they fully understood it," Chaffetz said, "the fact I'm concurring with Bill Richardson and Janet Napolitano would probably give most Democrats pause rather than lead them to suggest it's racially motivated."

Chaffetz did go a step farther than the governors, suggesting tent cities surrounded by barbed wire. He said during debates for the Republican nomination that the idea came from Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose tent facilities are a lightning rod in the immigration debate.

Chaffetz praised Arpaio for cutting costs "dramatically."

"I added the part about adding military-style tent facilities," Chaffetz said of his endorsement of the WGA plan, "but the concept of building detention facilities came from the governors."

He wants Honda to apologize because he said the California congressman insinuated that Chaffetz's plans are based on ethnicity.

"That simply is not the case," Chaffetz said. "It infuriates me that someone suggest this is based on ethnicity. That's absolutely wrong.

"That dreadful part of our history was wrong. It was based purely on ethnicity. But immigration crosses all bounds. There's no country that is exempt. This is a major crisis in this country. We're dealing with tens of millions of people here illegally. I'm just asking to enforce the law. When the Western governors are crying out for someone in Washington to listen to them, I'm listening to them, and I want to go fight for them."

In 1988, Congress agreed to pay $20,000 to each surviving person who had been detained in internment camps. In 2004, a unanimous Congress approved a National Day of Remembrance for the Japanese, German and Italian communities detained in the United States during World War II.

Honda is the chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and represents California's District 15, which includes Silicon Valley and a diverse constituency.

---

E-mail: twalch@desnews.com