Trump wants the Census to not count undocumented

Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday barring the counting of undocumented immigrants in the 2020 Census that is currently underway.

A White House statement says, "Giving congressional representation and political influence to illegal aliens — people who have blatantly disregarded our laws — would be a perversion of our democratic principles."

It goes on to state that "allowing illegal aliens to be counted for the purpose of apportionment could also create perverse incentives — such as potentially rewarding states that encourage violations of Federal immigration law — that would undermine our system of government."

Dale Ho, an attorney with the ACLU told CBS that Trump has lost on the census before and predicted he will lose again.

“The Constitution requires that everyone in the U.S. be counted in the census. President Trump can’t pick and choose. He tried to add a citizenship question to the census and lost in the Supreme Court,” Ho said. “His latest attempt to weaponize the census for an attack on immigrant communities will be found unconstitutional. We’ll see him in court, and win, again.”

Asian Americans Advancing Justice called Trump's latest attack against immigrants "unbelievable and unconstitutional."

"This is the latest in a series of attempts to politicize the census and use it as a weapon in his anti-immigrant agenda. It is a move straight out of the white supremacists’ playbook that has every discriminatory practice to restrict the rights of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian American people,” the statement continued.

Since the first US census in 1790, both US citizens and noncitizens — regardless of immigration status — have been included in the country's official population counts.

The fifth sentence of the Constitution specifies that "persons" residing in the states should be counted every 10 years to determine each state's share of seats in the House of Representatives. The 14th Amendment, which ended the counting of an enslaved person as "three fifths" of a free person, goes further to require the counting of the "whole number of persons in each state."

“There is no end to this President’s attempts to violate the U.S. Constitution. The constitutional mandate, as upheld by the US Supreme Court, is clear. The US Census must count all persons in this country," said John C. Yang, President and Executive Director of Advancing Justice. "We cannot allow the Trump administration to weaponize the census for political gain. Without the full census data, we all will be underrepresented and under-resourced for the next ten years.”

This is not the first time the Trump administration tried to influence the Census. Last year, under the White House wanted the Census delayed because it wanted to include a question regarding a person's immigration status. The Census Bureau's own study warned  that asking that question would result in people not filling out the questionnaire. States, fearing an undercount, sued the government and the Supreme Court ruled against the question.

“It’s just plain unconstitutional to exclude anyone from the Census. These renewed efforts by the administration to deter Census completion will be met with strong resistance. We know that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are already the least likely to complete their census questionnaires, and OCA will double down our efforts to get the word out for a fair and complete count of all community members across the country," said Rita Pin Ahrens, Executive Director of OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates.