The spokesman for a group that supported President-elect Trump in the election said the Japanese internment in World War II created a “precedent” for registering Muslim immigrants.
“We have in the past [made registries],” Carl Higbie, who was a spokesman for the Great America Political Action Committee, said on Fox News Wednesday. “We’ve done it based on race, we’ve done it based on religion, we’ve done it based on region.
“To be perfectly honest, it is legal, I think it’ll hold constitutional muster. I know the [American Civil Liberties Union] is going to challenge it, but I think it’ll pass. We’ve done it with Iran back a while ago, we did it during World War II with Japanese which, call it what you will …”
At that point, interviewer Megyn Kelly cut Higbie off and said, “You’re not proposing we go back to the days of Japanese internment camps, I hope.”
Higbie said, “No, no, no, I’m not proposing that at all. … I’m just saying there is precedent for it and I’m not saying I agree with it.”
The registry of immigrants from Muslim countries was discontinued in 2011 after about 10 years. It was stopped due to civil rights concerns and the Department of Homeland Security ruling that it was redundant.
However, some of Trump’s top advisers, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, want to bring the registry back. Kobach told Reuters last week that he is drafting a proposal for Trump.
Higbie said such a proposal is necessary due to the people who are “doing harm” that are a part of the Muslim faith.
“There’s always a case for abuse in this thing but the fundamental problem is we have a large faction; being a part of the Muslim faith is not a bad thing, there’s 1.6 billion Muslims out there and most of them are good people but there is a small percentage of people that have chosen to align with an extreme ideology within the faith and they’re doing harm. We would like to keep tabs on it until we can figure out what’s going on.”
