The U.S. Census 2020 form and invitation letter.
The U.S. Census Bureau (U.S. Census Bureau) said Saturday (Jan. 16) that citizenship data for 2020 Census respondents will not be finalized or released until after President Trump (Trump) leaves office.
President Trump had ordered the executive branch to share information on U.S. citizens and non-citizens with the Census Bureau in 2019, and faced litigation to block it.
Subsequently, Trump issued a July 21, 2020, memorandum requiring the exclusion of aliens without legal immigration status from the benchmark for allocating seats in congressional districts; and ordered the Department of Commerce to report two sets of numbers for each state in the 2020 Census: the total population and the total population minus the number of illegal immigrants. The latter figure will be used as a benchmark for allocating congressional seats.
But the Census Bureau 16 said they were unable to submit the data used to allocate congressional seats by the statutory deadline of Dec. 31, 2020, or to have citizenship information ready before Biden takes office Jan. 20, 2021, and that reports, estimates or data related to the two Trump executive orders “will not be finalized, reported or publicly disclosed until the change in administration on Jan. 20, 2021.”
The Bureau also said that the Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce will not report or publicly disclose any demographic counts or estimates related to the April 1, 2020 population, “including counts or estimates of the illegal/undocumented immigrant population prior to the change in administration.”
The Census Bureau blamed the delay in reporting the data on a court order filed Jan. 15 in a lawsuit by the National League of Cities. The order required the bureau to suspend operations for 21 days. The Census Bureau added, “If these population counts or estimates were completed after the change in government and before the end of the moratorium, defendants will provide plaintiffs with seven days’ detailed notice prior to reporting or public disclosure.”
According to court documents, Justice Department attorneys said before the judge issued the order that the Census Bureau would not be able to finalize data on the benchmarks for congressional district seat assignments or citizenship information “until many weeks after Jan. 20.
In addition, Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham sent a Jan. 13 memo asking workers to stop complying with President Trump’s citizenship mandate.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
On the other hand, the new administration has taken a stand against much of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, including efforts to exclude illegal immigrants from congressional district seat allocation benchmarks, according to recent public speeches by Biden and a memo released by his chief of staff, Ron Klain.
The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled on Dec. 18, 2020, that the federal government could exclude illegal immigrants from the 2020 census count in order to divide congressional seats and Electoral College votes held by states based on the legal U.S. population.
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