President Trump
Donald John Trump More than a dozen people injured in shootings near Chicago funeral home Players of the Cleveland Indians meet with team leaders to discuss the possible name change Pelosi calls the coronavirus the ‘Trump virus’ MORE On Tuesday, he issued an order preventing undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2020 census for the purpose of assigning representation to Congress.
The order, which immediately sparked legal challenges, amounts to a workaround for Trump after the Supreme Court last year blocked the administration from adding a citizenship question to the decennial poll.
The justification for the note is based on the argument that the President has the last word on the transmission of the final census report to Congress and that the Constitution does not explicitly define who should be included in the distribution determination.
“The discretion delegated to the executive branch to determine who qualifies as ‘inhabitant’ includes the authority to exclude from the distribution base aliens who are not in a state of legal immigration,” the order states. “Excluding these illegal aliens from the distribution base is more in line with the principles of representative democracy that underpins our system of government.
The order implicitly calls California, a state overwhelmingly represented by Democrats in Congress, arguing to rule out undocumented immigrants, noting that “one state houses more than 2.2 million illegal aliens.”
“Including these illegal aliens in the state’s population for the purpose of distributing them could result in the allocation of two or three more seats in Congress than would otherwise be assigned,” the order states.
In a statement, Trump framed the memorandum as an effort to reject “the radical left,” an indication that he believes it will appeal to his fan base before the November election.
“There used to be a time when you could proudly declare ‘I am a citizen of the United States,'” Trump said. “But now, the radical left is trying to erase the existence of this concept and hide the number of illegal aliens in our country. This is all part of a broader left-wing effort to erode the rights of American citizens, and not I’ll defend it. “
Representative Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), Head of the Hispanic Caucus campaign arm of Congress, called Trump racist and said the order is a distraction.
“Trump’s strategy to scare immigrants from participating in the Census is illegal; he will not appear in court and he knows it. This executive order is the action of a racist, misguided and troubled president who continues to unconstitutionally attack immigrants who work hard in this country to distract themselves from their failure as a leader, “said Cárdenas.
It’s unclear how the Trump administration would discern citizenship or immigration status from each respondent, as there are no citizenship questions included in the 2020 census. Last year, the president ordered federal agencies to collect and report data to the Commerce Department on Citizens and Non-Citizens in the United States and noted that the information would be used to help determine the census count.
“If you use questionable social science data techniques, you are likely to have additional legal challenges,” said Michael Kagan, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Kagan noted that the use of sampling and other social science methods to reinforce census numbers was overturned by the Supreme Court in a landmark 1999 case.
Trump, in an executive order last year, following the Supreme Court decision on the citizenship issue, ordered federal agencies to share all available information with the Commerce Department, which administers the Census, to discern what Respondents are legally in the country and which are not.
That order specifically mentions the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its visa and green card holders files, as well as naturalization, entry and exit records; the State Department’s passport and refugee records; and registries of social services such as Medicaid and the Social Security Administration.
“The Census Bureau has been collecting department and agency records. Those records should provide a basis for identifying illegal aliens,” a White House official told The Hill.
Tuesday’s order sparked swift reactions from other lawmakers and advocacy groups who, amid the coronavirus pandemic, were already concerned about the lack of count of minority groups in the census and consequently affecting the distribution of representation and resources for years to come.
“The Constitution requires that everyone in the US be counted in the census. President Trump cannot choose, “Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.”
“He tried to add a citizenship question to the census and lost in the Supreme Court,” Ho continued. “His latest attempt to turn the census into a weapon for an attack on immigrant communities will be unconstitutional. We will see it in court and win again.”
Rep. Gil Cisneros
Gilbert (Gil) Ray CisnerosMORE (D-Calif.) He said Trump’s order is an attempt to depress minority participation in the Census.
“Instead of working to stop the spread of the coronavirus, President Trump is putting his energy into undermining the United States’ census. This executive order is another blatant and delayed attempt to depress the number of people who could participate in the population count by constitutional mandate. After the Supreme Court prevented him from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the President is trying to illegally sidestep his decision, ”said Cisneros.
The Trump administration previously attempted to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, but Trump abandoned the attempt to do so after the Supreme Court decision, which said the administration’s reasoning was “artificial.”
The Commerce Department later said it would print the census materials without the question. The result was a victory for immigration groups and Democrats who argued that including the question would discourage undocumented people from completing the census and lead to an inaccurate population count.
This approach differs from the citizenship issue in that it openly seeks to prevent a particular group from being counted in the census.
During the debate on the citizenship issue, Trump administration officials vehemently denied the allegations that he intended to discourage the participation of foreign citizens, despite accusations to that effect from his opponents.
“It is a direct attack on political power. It would reduce the political representation of the most diverse states in the United States,” said Kagan, one of the litigants in the case that blocked the question of citizenship.
The new policy targets only the distribution effects of the Census, but ignores its budgetary effects: Funding for federal programs is largely allocated based on Census data.
If undocumented immigrants were successfully excluded from the census, California, with its more than 2 million undocumented residents, would suffer most of the effects of representation.
But red states like Texas and Georgia, where 1.6 million and 400,000 undocumented residents live, respectively, will also be hit hard, and possibly lose seats in Congress.
Some allies of the administration applauded the movement. Dan Stein, head of the United States Federation for Immigration Reform, a group that advocates restricting legal and illegal immigration, called the memo “an honest attempt” to ensure that every citizen and legal immigrant receives “full representation and fair. “
The order is the first in what is expected to be a series of unilateral Trump actions in the coming weeks. Major State Boss Mark Meadows
Mark Randall MeadowsCoronavirus Talks About Splitting Republican Party Unity on Money: McConnell Anticipates Republican Party Coronavirus Bill | Senate panel advances Trump Fed candidate who recently endorsed the gold standard | Economists Warn of Reduced Unemployment Benefits Democrats Criticize Republican Party on Coronavirus Relief: Where’s Your Bill? PLUS He joked earlier this month that Trump was preparing requests related to immigration, manufacturing and other issues, although he did not elaborate.
Trump has said he is preparing an order that would emphasize merit-based immigration, but has fueled confusion by suggesting that the action would also target Dreamers protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. White House aides have disputed that DACA will be covered by the executive order.
The administration is widely expected to try a second time to terminate DACA after the Supreme Court rejected its first attempt but did not dispute the President’s right to end the program.
—Updated at 3:55 pm
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