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was uppermost in our minds. Do they slip in as immigrants, or do they come in unnoticed, not rough a port but through a fishing boat landing some where on the coast of Maine? All that kind of thing became involved with our immigration law.

As Biddle pointed out to the President, and as the President saw at once, your immigration law couldn't operate in the ordinary way during the period of the war. It can't. You can't deport people who are deportable if you can't get them to the country of their origin. You're going to have a problem as to what to do with them. You're going to have a problem as to what to do with the people who are apprehended. Ellis Island won't hold them. There's got to be some kind of a place to keep them in the meantime. Biddle made a much better presentation than I had apparently, because he knew more than I did. I only knew the awkward and very irregular things that we were running up against and that we felt inadequate about. I had recommended some kind of a change.

The President had dawdled with it and hadn't done anything, and then one night he called me up. It must have been nearly midnight. I had a direct line. The President had a direct line into the house of every Cabinet officer, or at least he did into my house. It didn't go through any switch board at all, except the White House's. It was the White House telephone. It was on the desk in the little study off