Democrats in Congress are prepared to present a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s directive to exclude undocumented people living in the United States from the distribution base after the 2020 census.
While the 2020 census does not include a citizenship issue, the president argued that excluding “illegal aliens” from the count “reflects a better understanding of the Constitution and is consistent with the principles of our representative democracy.”
“My administration will not support the representation of Congress to foreigners who enter or remain illegally in the country, because doing so would create perverse incentives and undermine our system of government,” Trump wrote in a memorandum. “Just as we do not give political power to people who are here temporarily, we must not give political power to people who should not be here at all.”
That statement was met with strong opposition from Democrats, including Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, who said she would challenge the effort in court. Pelosi said the memo is “unconstitutional,” adding that the Constitution makes it clear that the “actual number” of the “number of people” is used for the distribution of Congress.
“Trump’s illegal effort is designed to re-inject fear and mistrust into vulnerable and traditionally less numbered communities, while wreaking havoc with the Census,” Pelosi, D-Calif., Wrote in a statement. “The House of Representatives will vigorously dispute the President’s unconstitutional and illegal attempt to harm the Census. We will be vigilant to guarantee a complete, fair and accurate Census and continue working to guarantee maximum participation and inclusion so that each person in each community is counted” .
In the absence of the census citizenship question, it is unclear how the Trump administration would accurately determine how many people to exclude from data that contributes to congressional district distribution, or how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives from the USA
During a press conference at the Rose Garden last week, the president acknowledged the uncertainty regarding the total number of people living in the United States.
“No one can give the exact count. We are trying to get an exact count,” Trump said July 14. “But over the years, many illegals have entered the country, so it depends on how you want it.” bill. But you could say 325 to 350 million people. ”
Pelosi said the Constitution unequivocally requires a “real enumeration” of the “whole numbers of people” for the count of the population and the distribution of Congress.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and given the rhetoric of last year’s debate on the citizenship issue, the census is already facing an uphill battle with many communities.
Opponents of the presidential memorandum argue that there is much more than a representation problem in Congress, and regardless of whether it is resolved, the impacts can still be felt.
“Trump wins simply by connecting immigration and census even more in the public mind,” said Michael Kagan, director of the UNLV Immigration Clinic and plaintiff in a Maryland case that produced one of the final requirements on the issue of census citizenship last summer. “If that leads some immigrant families to fear the census, that achieves the same goal of discounting the population of diverse communities.”
Congressional districts are distributed according to census data, which counts everyone in a household as well as the homeless population.
Once the census is complete, the Census Bureau must deliver its cast count to the President by April 30, 2021, four months after the original schedule, due to the pandemic.
Last year, the Supreme Court blocked the administration from adding a census question about citizenship, but left the door open for another attempt to track down non-citizens.
Trump called the decision “ridiculous” and said he was not backing down. Then in July 2019, the White House issued an executive order to collect government data on non-citizens, including those legally living in the country.
The President’s memorandum says that he claims his authority for an executive order signed on July 11, 2019, asking the Secretary of Commerce to use the methodology of a report that establishes the Census Residency Criteria and Residence Situations “to allow the Secretary to obtain accurate data on the number of citizens, non-citizens and illegal aliens in the country. ”
This methodology is established in the 2020 Census Final Residence Criteria and in the Residence Situations, 83 Fed. Reg. 5525, a 168-page document published in the federal registry on February 8, 2018.
That document states that the distribution “is based on the resident population, plus a count of federal employees abroad, for each of the 50 states.”
It also states that the Census Bureau “will retain guidance on the proposed residence situation for foreign nationals in the United States.”
“Foreign citizens are considered to be ‘living’ in the United States if, at the time of the census, they live and sleep most of the time in a residence in the United States,” the statement read.
The move has energized many Democrats in Congress, while Republicans have largely refrained from reacting to the memo.
“President Trump is bigoted and racist, and he is using the levers of power to harm the people he hates,” Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., Wrote in a statement. “Not counting in the census is being ignored by our government; there are no support systems for people that our government does not know exist. It has been a long time since the highest office in this nation fell to someone so low, and we can only hope it never happens again once the shadow it casts on this nation finally disappears. ”
“This executive order is unconstitutional and only serves to please the Trump campaign and stoke anti-immigrant reactions,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona. “Just before the election, Trump and Stephen Miller are waving for something to hold on to.”
“Undocumented immigrants live in our communities and should be counted as individuals, not only for the sake of precision, but also for the recognition of their dignity as human beings and as our neighbors,” said the majority leader of the House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer, D-Md. argument. “We must not allow our Constitution to be undermined by this president who has not shown respect for his articles and disdains the rule of law that he protects.”
The American Civil Liberties Union also announced that it is prepared to fight the order in court.
“The Constitution requires everyone in the US to be counted on the census,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “President Trump cannot pick and choose. He tried to add a citizenship question to the census and lost in the Supreme Court. His latest attempt to turn the census into a weapon for an attack on immigrant communities will be unconstitutional. We will see it in the cut, and win again. ”
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson, Quinn Owen and Victoria Moll Ramirez contributed to this report.
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