George Takei has hit out at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in a video which features the Star Trek star speaking Spanish.

The 79-year-old actor compares Trump’s proposed deportation of undocumented Latino immigrants to the Second World War internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans.

George and his family were among those imprisoned and the memories are still raw.

Best known for playing Hikaru Sulu in the 1960s space series, the star was five-years-old when he and his family were removed from their Los Angeles home and eventually sent to a camp in Arkansas after Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour.

He said in Spanish: “I’m addressing this to my Spanish-speaking fans and their friends. I want to give some personal, historical context on how Donald Trump’s words and plans can have very real and terrible consequences.”

He added: “When Trump says today that Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers, it is his way of similarly dehumanising whole groups, so that he can set his plans in motion.”

Star Trek actor George Takei (Wong Maye-E/AP)
Star Trek actor George Takei (Wong Maye-E/AP)

The actor continued: “Latinos have the power to stop Trump, especially by voting in large numbers in swing states like Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico.”

The video, which is subtitled in English, includes evocative clips of Japanese-Americans entering the camps after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the internment in 1942.

George, who took part in ITV’s I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! in 2008, said he learned Spanish while growing up with Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles.