On this day in 1986 Ronald Reagan Administration convened the first meeting of the Alien Border Control Committee. The little known committee met numerous times and ultimately published a 40 page memo that provided steps contingency plan of implementing interment camps for Arabs.

The plan was brushed aside by the administration, as some saw it as too extreme and undemocratic. There is a likelihood that it was dusted off by the Trump admin and is being used to help draft some of his anti-Arab and anti-Muslim policies, including the Muslim Ban.

A great article was published about this plan in Politico back in 2016, which may have gone under the radar. You can check it out below. The memo is embedded in the article. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/secret-plans-detention-internment-camps-1980s-deportation-arab-muslim-immigrants-214177

Look at these recommendations: "Banning incoming aliens from countries compromised by terrorism; deporting non-immigrant aliens through a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act relating to destruction of government property..."

Sound familiar? It's happening today!

I wrote a chapter for a book published recently by Professors @KhaledBeydoun and Cyra Akila Choudhury. In it I lay out why we will see a Muslim registry implemented by Trump, based off this memo. Taking it even further, camps are not out of question. https://www.amazon.com/Islamophobia-Law-Cyra-Akila-Choudhury/dp/1108433715

Other rec: an executive order, imagining a president who suspended entry to “any class of aliens whose presence ... was deemed detrimental to the public safety.” And it recommended a holding facility in Oakdale, Louisiana, a camp that could “house and isolate” up to 5,000 aliens.