Trump orders voting districts to exclude illegal immigrants in count

P resident Donald Trump signed a memorandum that would prevent migrants who are in the United States illegally from being counted when US congressional voting districts are next redrawn, triggering swift rebukes from Democrats and threats of litigation.

US census experts and lawyers say the action is legally dubious, and not easily executed in practice. Democratic- led states, including New York, and civil rights groups have already vowed to mount a legal challenge or said they are considering it.

If enacted, the plan could benefit Trump's Republican Party by eliminating the largely non-white population of migrants in the United States illegally, creating voting districts that skew more Caucasian.

It could also cause populous states with large immigrant contingents to lose seats in the 435-member U.S House of Representatives, including big left-leaning states like California - currently with 53 seats - and New York, with 27.

The process of drawing voting maps for federal congressional districts is known as apportionment.

"Including these illegal aliens in the population of the state for the purpose of apportionment could result in the allocation of two or three more congressional seats than would otherwise be allocated," the memo said.

Redistricting, in which voting districts are redrawn to reflect changes in the population, is next slated for 2021, after the results of the 2020 US census are in.

Each state will be given a share of the 435 congressional seats based on population. Historically, the distribution of seats has been based on total population, regardless of immigration status.

Trump’s memo would exclude those not in the US legally.

California

It pointed to strongly Democratic California, the country's most populous state with 53 representatives in the House.

The order said that six percent of the state's population are illegal aliens, and if not counted it would lose two or three seats in Congress.

Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, predicted Trump's latest effort also would be found unconstitutional.

“The Constitution requires that everyone in the U.S. be counted in the census,” Ho said. “President Trump can’t pick and choose. He tried to add a citizenship question to the census and lost in the Supreme Court ... We will see him in court, and win, again.”

Trump’s latest move comes in the lead-up to the November election as he is trying to motivate his base supporters with fresh action against illegal immigration, which was a mainstay of his 2016 campaign

"There used to be a time when you could proudly declare, ‘I am a citizen of the United States.’ But now, the radical left is trying to erase the existence of this concept and conceal the number of illegal aliens in our country,” Trump said in a statement. “This is all part of a broader left-wing effort to erode the rights of Americans citizens, and I will not stand for it.”

The financial and political stakes in the 2020 Census are huge, with Democratic-leaning metropolitan areas with large immigrant populations worried about losing dollars and political representation through Trump's efforts.

Backlash

The move brought a sharp backlash from Democrats.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco in Congress, said the order violates the US constitution and the rule of law and is part of Trump's "cruel anti-immigrant agenda."

"The Constitution is clear: it requires an 'actual Enumeration' of the 'whole numbers of persons' for the population count and congressional apportionment," Pelosi said in a statement.

"Trump's unlawful effort is designed to again inject fear and distrust into vulnerable and traditionally undercounted communities, while sowing chaos with the census," she said.

The American Civil Liberties Union called it "patently unconstitutional."

"The Constitution requires that everyone in the US be counted in the census. President Trump can't pick and choose." said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project.

"We'll see him in court, and win, again," he said, referring to the earlier citizenship question case.

The state of New York, which could be under threat to lose a seat in Congress if Trump follows through, said it would sue to block the move.

"No one ceases to be a person because they lack documentation," New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.

"Under the law, every person residing in the US during the census, regardless of status, must be counted."

Decades-old issue

The issue of counting non-citizens in the census has been fought over for decades. Legal experts have repeatedly said changing it requires an amendment to the constitution.

Republicans maintain the current counting method favors Democrats, though Trump's party controlled the House for eight years straight from 2011 to 2019 when the Democrats won it back.

The census does have an impact, but not clearly in one party's favor.

In 2010 mostly Republican-leaning states including Texas and Florida gained seats, while losers were split between the parties.

Last year conservative-leaning Alabama sued to have undocumented migrants excluded from the count, saying it would benefit with greater representation in Congress.

The Trump administration last year sought to add a citizenship question to the census count, now well underway, to the same end.

But the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's argument was not constitutionally sound, implying he had merely political motives.

How the census will determine which respondents are legal and which are not is unclear in Trump's order. It tells the secretary of commerce to help determine such information.