12 years, you say? Where was the rule of law and fundamental civil rights when 80 000 citizens where sent to internment camps based solely on the nationality of their parents?
Well, sadly absent, sure. That was a tragic wartime clusterfuck -- but bad as it was, it was still a far cry from the current disappearing people (including citizens) and interning and torturing them for years on end. And the Japanese interment camps were later officially repudiated by the government, and reparations were paid to the victimized families in the Reagan era. Not that reparations are sufficient to make it right, but it it still qualitatively different than the current situation.
I'm not claiming that the USA unhypocritically perfectly adhered to its stated values in the past. We broke the law and tortured people in WWII, in Vietnam, and in the guerrilla wars of South America, too. But you had to do those things below the radar. There were eventually consequences, if it was found out.
Now the US government disappears its citizens, or kills them (and whatever men, women and children that happen to be nearby) right out in the open, and the President goes on TV to talk about what a weighty thing it is on his conscience for him to approve all these murder lists in advance.
It's true, as some point out, that unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral things have always been done by the US government (and pretty much any government). However, it seems to me a fundamentally different thing when it is done without even pretending to adhere to the law or the constitution, in any more meaningful way than Nixon's claim that "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal"[1][2].
Rules have exceptions. Nobody can argue that the US government has never done anything wrong, but there is a difference between failing to uphold your principles and outright abandoning them.
We shouldn't let past abuses excuse future abuses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment