On Friday, more than 13,000 people had signed a pledge on website Register US, promising to register as Muslims in the event of a national Muslim database being rolled out, so as “to stand together with Muslims across the country.”

The online movement reflects a divided nation in the aftermath of Trump’s presidential election win, that followed a campaign marked by hardline rhetoric on immigration.

In a Reuters interview this week, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who media reports say is a key member of Trump’s transition team, said a group advising Trump on immigration could recommend the reinstatement of a national registry of some Muslim immigrants and visitors who enter the United States on visas from countries where extremist organizations are active.

However, Jason Miller, communications director of Trump’s transition team, said in an emailed statement to the Thomson Reuters Foundation on Friday that “President-elect Trump has never advocated for any registry or system that tracks individuals based on their religion, and to imply otherwise is completely false.”

Last year, as he was campaigning to become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, Trump drew widespread condemnation when he agreed on-camera to the idea of a government database to keep track of Muslims in the United States.

Many among those who took the pledge on Register US’s website posted on Twitter a message, prepared by the group, detailing their intentions.

“If Trump requires Muslims to register with the government, I pledge to register as Muslim too,” the message said.

Twitter user Sam Martin, from Florida, was among thousands who voiced his support for the initiative.

“If anyone'(s) name is entered into a database driven by GOP/Trump bigotry, this is how I say, ‘It’s wrong to do this!’,” he wrote in a comment on Twitter.

Registering Muslims in the United States has been likened to the U.S. government’s internment of Japanese-Americans in camps during World War Two – for which an official apology was later issued – and with Nazi Germany’s laws that required Jews to register with authorities.

In a statement posted on Twitter earlier this week, the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jonathan Greenblatt, was quoted as saying that “If one day Muslims will be forced to register, that is the day that this proud Jew will register as a Muslim.”

Register US co-founder, Rebecca Green, who works in brand marketing in New York City, said she was encouraged by the public’s response since launching the website with two friends earlier this week.

“We see this effort as a plea to American values to not become the kind of country that keeps lists based on religion,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an email.

“Nothing is more anti-American than a registry based on religion.”

There were about 3.3 million Muslim people living in the United States in 2015, according a recent estimate by the Washington-D.C.-based Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank.

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Little more than a week after Donald Trump was elected the next U.S. president, buoying anti-immigrant parties in Europe and elsewhere, the pope noted “how quickly those among us with the status of a stranger, an immigrant or a refugee become a threat, take on the status of an enemy…

“An enemy because they come from a distant country or have different customs. An enemy because of the colour of their skin, their language or their social class. An enemy because they think differently or even have a different faith,” he said at a ceremony to induct new cardinals.

While not naming any country, Francis appeared to refer to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attitudes that surfaced during the U.S. campaign and since the election.

The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it was investigating reports of intimidation and harassment in schools, churches and elsewhere since the election.

One of the new cardinals, Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago, told Reuters the pope was “very much aware of the fact that if that (animosity) is not checked, it is very contagious and it can spread quickly, it can be like a wildfire”.

In his homily, the pope said the Church itself was not immune to “a virus of polarisation and animosity”, an apparent reference to a public challenge by four conservative cardinals, who accused him of sowing confusion on moral issues.

In the “consistory” ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis appointed 17 new cardinals, 13 of them under 80 and thus still eligible to succeed him.

Afterwards, the pope and the new cardinals boarded two buses and visited former pope Benedict, who has been living in a house in the Vatican gardens since resigning in 2013.

Naming new cardinals allows a pontiff to put his stamp on the future of the 1.2-billion-member Church. The appointees come from 15 countries and many are progressives like the pope. Three come from the United States.

The new cardinal-electors under 80, eligible to take part in a papal conclave, come from Italy, the Central African Republic, Spain, the United States, Brazil, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Belgium, Mauritius, Mexico and Papua New Guinea.

Those over 80 come from Italy, Malaysia, Lesotho and Albania.

Francis has now named 44 cardinal-electors, slightly more than a third of the total of 120 allowed by Church law.

It was Francis’ third “consistory” since his election in 2013 as the first non-European pontiff in 1,300 years, and he has used each occasion to show support for the Church in far-flung places or where Catholics are suffering.

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