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Census Bureau Stops Work On Trump's Request For Unauthorized Immigrant Count
This is great news. Restoring the public's trust in the integrity of the Census Bureau after all its been through with this Administration is a must.
The U.S. Census Bureau has halted all work on Trump's directive to produce a state-by-state count of unauthorized immigrants that would have been used to alter a key set of census numbers....
Senior career officials at the bureau instructed the internal team assigned to carry out Trump's presidential memo to stand down and cease their work immediately on Tuesday night [January 12, 2021].... the bureau's internal watchdog issued a memo revealing that the agency's Trump-appointed director had pressured employees to produce a report by Friday.
The move by civil servants effectively ends the bureau's participation in Trump's bid to make an unprecedented change to who is counted in the 2020 census numbers that will be used to reallocate each state's share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes for the next decade. According to the 14th Amendment, those counts must include the "whole number of persons in each state."
We have a duty to uphold the Constitution and count ALL persons in each state, regardless of immigration status.
The president's memo, which was issued in July, was found to be unlawful, unconstitutional or both by three lower courts last year before the Supreme Court ruled in December that it was too early for any court to weigh in because the case is "riddled with contingencies and speculation."
This week [January 11, 2021], a Justice Department attorney informed a federal judge that the state population counts needed for reapportioning House seats and electoral votes are not expected to be ready until March 6, more than a month into the administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has condemned Trump's attempt to exclude unauthorized immigrants.
We should be incredibly grateful to the career servants committed to the Constitution and the Census mission.
The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that led a lawsuit against Trump's memo, is calling for Biden to "formally rescind" Trump's policy after becoming president.
"Doing so would send the message that under our Constitution, everyone in this country counts," Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.