US lawmakers and rights bodies slam Donald Trump's suggestion of registry for Muslims

US President elect Donald Trump's plan to restore a database of immigrants coming from Muslim majority countries has drawn huge criticism from Democratic lawmakers and rights bodies in the country.

National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) is a post-9/11 program which required travellers to the US from specified Muslim-majority countries to immediately register with the federal government or face deportation.

"Reinstating failed programs that target Arabs and Muslims in our country is exactly what ISIS was cheering on election night when America, a beacon of freedom in the world, gives in to fear and begins chipping away at civil rights, our enemies are emboldened and their ranks swell with new recruits," Senator Dick Durbin said.

"Back in 2002, I called for this program to be terminated because there were serious doubts it would help combat terrorism. Terrorism experts have since concluded that this program wasted precious homeland security funds and alienated Arab- and Muslim-Americans. Failed programs like this are the exact wrong approach to combating terrorism, and I will fight to ensure it never returns," Durbin said.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Co-Chairs Raul M Grijalva and Keith Ellison, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chairwoman Judy Chu, CPC Vice Chair Congressman Mike Honda, and CPC Vice Chair Mark Takano slammed Trump surrogate, Carl Higbie, for suggesting that Japanese- American internment camps could serve as a precedent for the creation of a Muslim registry.

"These remarks are beyond disturbing. This is fear, not courage. This is hate, not policy," Honda said. "Since Trump was elected president, thousands of Americans have voiced fears over what our country might look like in the coming years. Last night, one of his surrogates showed us why so many people are afraid of a Trump administration.

"The fact that our incoming President has considered internment as a model for how to move forward with the Muslim community is absolutely shocking. We cannot allow it to be normalised or enacted," Ellison said.

Grijalva said it took the US decades to own up to the stain of Japanese internment, providing compensation to more than 100,000 people who suffered through it and formally apologising through the Civil Liberties Act in 1988.

To say this heinous treatment should be precedent for any policy is horrific, and Trump should denounce it immediately.

"Any proposal to force American-Muslims to register with the federal government, and to use Japanese imprisonment during World War II as precedent, is abhorrent and has no place in our society. These ideas are based on tactics of fear, division, and hate that we must condemn," Chu said."

I am horrified that people connected to the incoming Administration are using my family's experience as a precedent for what President-elect Trump could do," said Takano.