Supreme Court Justices Share Doubts About Trump’s Directive to Exclude Illegal Immigrants in Census Count
In a surprising move on Monday, the conservative majority Supreme Court publicly shared doubts about President Trump’s plan to exclude illegal immigrants from the Census count.
The US Supreme Court was reviewing President Trump’s contentious directive to exclude all illegal immigrants in the culling of current Census data. With an estimated 10 - 14 million illegal immigrants in the US, many of whom pay taxes, the exclusion of these illegal immigrants is daunting due to its direct impact upon the allocation of US House of Representatives districts in all states.
New York is leading the protest against this new directive, with numerous cities, counties, immigrants and human rights groups following suit. Their argument against excluding illegal immigrants from the Census is that it would leave millions of people uncounted, which in turn would cause states such as New Jersey, California and Texas to lose vital House seats.
However, the Constitution clearly states that the “whole number of persons” must be included from every state in order to determine how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes will be allocated to each state.
Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, who represented the Trump directive, told the Supreme Court Justices he could not say specifically how many illegal immigrants, whom he called “illegal aliens,” were being included in the plan. Wall said even the Census Bureau cannot say for certain how many illegal immigrants live in the US, and that they “still don't know even roughly how many illegal aliens it'll be able to identify, let alone how their number and geographic concentration might affect apportionment.”
Trump’s majority of conservative justices sitting on the Supreme Court did not show any particular favor toward the current administration.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said it would be a “monumental task” to exclude millions of illegal immigrants from the Census, adding there was only a month left until 2021.
Newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, "A lot of historical evidence and long-standing practice really cuts against your position.”
Three lower courts have already tossed out the Trump directive, noting it would be a violation of census statutes and/or the Constitution.
In a split decision on Monday, the Supreme Court Justices decided they would not step in until after the president delivers the Census numbers to Congress.
But with the Pandemic surging across the US in all states, and an expected grim winter with predictions of about 250,000 more deaths by March 1, the Census Bureau has indicated it cannot complete the population count until 2021, most likely at the end of January when Trump is no longer president.
Since the court gave the impression that it would be better to wait and see what might happen with this directive, and with the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, this first-time-ever attempt by a sitting president to discount millions of people living in the US and then remove House seats from specific states, including Democratic-leaning California and New Jersey, may not see the light of day.
As Biden said in his disagreement with Trump’s directive, "In America, everyone counts."
