Heidi Gurcke Donald and her family were expelled from their home in San José, Costa Rica and interned in Crystal City, Texas, for fifteen months before her father, Werner Gurcke, was released on parole.

A graduate of the University of California in San Francisco, she is a retired public health nurse living in California. She is actively involved in trying to increase public awareness of the Alien Enemy Control Program and its consequences. We Were Not the Enemy, a book she wrote in 2006, chronicles her family’s WW II experiences with the Latin American part of the U. S. civilian internment program.