Despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against having a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, Acting United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli said he thinks the Trump Administration will find a way to include it.
鈥I do think so,鈥 he told 鈥淔ox News Sunday鈥 when asked by host Dana Perino, adding that Trump had 鈥渆xpressed determination鈥 to ask respondents if they were U.S. citizens.
鈥He鈥檚 noted that the Supreme Court didn鈥檛 say this can鈥檛 be asked,鈥 Cuccinelli said of the question. 鈥淭hey said that they didn鈥檛 appreciate the process by which it came forward the first time.鈥
Trump, he said, 鈥渋s determined to fix that.鈥
The Trump administration had attempted to include the question on the grounds that it would help uphold the Voting Rights Act, but the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against including it, noting that the ruling left an opening for a different legal justification.
On Friday, Trump floated the notion of using an executive order to attach the question, but the American Civil Liberties Union immediately moved to block the idea.
鈥The question鈥檚 inclusion intentionally discriminates against immigrants and thwarts the constitutional mandate to accurately count the U.S. population,鈥 The ACLU said in a statement about the effort to include a citizenship question on the census form.
On 鈥淔ace the Nation,鈥 also on Sunday morning, Cuccinelli did not address the question of discrimination against Latinos and immigrants. Speaking in the context of immigration, he merely said the data would not be used to target individuals.
Pointing out that the census is used 鈥渢o gather an awful lot of information,鈥 he emphasized that it would be on an 鈥渁ggregated basis,鈥 not individually.
鈥Will my agency or other agencies see a person who says, 鈥楴o, I鈥檓 not a citizen, and their name and address and so forth,鈥 that鈥檚 taken on an aggregated basis,鈥 he said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not individualized data that comes to us.鈥
Nonetheless, the specter of a citizen question on the census could deter participation by immigrants and Latinos, according to the government鈥檚 own data.
This could reduce the count by up to 6.5 million, an undercount that could drastically affect allocation of basic government services, including congressional representation, to those communities. Opponents to the question said this was the goal 鈥 to undercount immigrants by reducing the number of responses.
