There's already a plan to fight Trump's Muslim registry, and it's brilliant

Throughout Trump's campaign, the candidate promised he would start a Muslim registry, and now that promise looks increasingly likely to become real.

On The Kelly File last night, Megyn Kelly interrogated a Trump surrogate, Carl Higbie, who alleged that the Trump campaign had judicial precedent for establishing a Muslim registry in World War II Japanese internment camps. Higbie's terrifying observation quickly went viral, and on social media, users debated ways they could best fight a registry.

For allies of the community, this might mean registering themselves.

First, it's important to establish what kind of registry Trump appears to be planning. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is a Trump immigration advisor who formerly worked for the Bush administration. Kobach hopes to resurrect the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS, a Bush-era Justice Department program he designed shortly after 9/11 which included a database of immigrants from 25 countries, 24 of which were Muslim majority. The program was indefinitely suspended under President Barack Obama in 2011.

Kobach's Muslim registry -- sorry, the "database of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries" -- only included non-citizens. By 2003, 83,000 Muslims had been registered, 13,000 were forced into court proceedings, and rounds of immigrants were rounded up and deported -- almost always for overstaying their VISA.

The ACLU has promised to see Trump in court, but constitutional law experts aren't confident that they will be successful. Historically, the courts have been hesitant to challenge the federal government in areas of immigration that have foreign policy implications.

What's more dangerous -- though unconstitutional and less likely -- is that Trump will also make Muslim-American citizens also register in a database. That was part of Trump's campaign rhetoric, and while it seems highly unlikely that it would make it through the courts, the president-elect made it a defining theme and promise of his campaign.

In order to fight both kind of Muslim registries, however, citizen allies of the community have been increasingly stepping up on social media and offering to register themselves instead. The goal is to confuse ICE officials -- the more names on the list, the harder they will be to identify, the argument goes -- and to establish ties of solidarity. A website that has since gone viral, known as Register.us, allows allies to sign a pledge to register themselves in the event of a Muslim registry.

On The Forward, Benjamin Gladstone wrote that, "All Jews should should register as Muslims because we know the horrors of religious registration all too well."

"The new American president-elect, Donald Trump, whose Islamophobia, misogyny, ableism, racism, and anti-Semitism have brought protesters out into the streets, has also announced a plan to 'register' Muslim Americans, just as the Nazis once did the Jews," Gladstone writes. "A database of the sort that Trump has proposed would enable the government to enforce discriminatory laws and to violate the civil liberties of American citizens based on their faith."

Gladstone then put out a call for all American citizens to commit to register as a Muslim if a registry does in fact happen.

"Therefore, I am putting out a call for Jewish citizens of the United States of America to commit, right now, to register as Muslim in the event that Donald Trump actually implements such a system, and to encourage other citizens, Jewish or not, to do the same."

It's unclear how allies of the community could sign up for the registry if it includes only non-citizens without facing major legal obstacles -- the move may be mostly symbolic. Non-Muslim immigrants might be able to sign up for it, but as registries have historically been used to deport people, their own chances of getting deported could increase as well.

On Twitter, however, allies of the Muslim community offered to step up and be registered first, arguing they could use their privilege to help others.

There's less than a 100 days before Trump is inaugurated as president, and Americans are starting to prepare -- now.