In advocating for a registry to track all Muslims living in or immigrating to the US, President-elect Donald Trump and his followers are raising the specter of the World War II incarceration, without due process, of 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of whom were US citizens and all of whom were innocent of any crimes. Even though President Ronald Reagan formally apologized for the incarceration and authorized reparations for the former prisoners in 1988, the incident is still being cited as a “precedent” for a Muslim registry.

Do such registries actually make the nation more secure? What is their history in the US and under what circumstances do they lead to detention of large groups of people? What specific lessons can we draw from the Japanese American incarceration as we ponder Trump’s intentions and the best means to combat them?

Join Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, UCLA’s George and Sakaye Aratani Chair in Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community; Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum; Hiroshi Motomura, UCLA’s Susan Westerberg Prager Professor of Law and author of the award-winning books Immigration Outside the Law (2014) and Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (2006); and moderator Ann Burroughs, JANM’s Interim President and CEO, for this important panel discussion.

A Zócalo Public Square/UCLA event, in partnership with the Japanese American National Museum.