Trump’s new immigration fight: how to redraw House districts

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Tuesday that seeks to bar people in the U.S. illegally from being included in the headcount as congressional districts are redrawn, a move that drew immediate criticism and promises of court challenges on constitutional grounds.

Trump said including them in the count “would create perverse incentives and undermine our system of government.” Seats in U.S. House of Representatives are redistributed every 10 years based on changes in population found in the census.

The Supreme Court blocked the administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form, with a majority saying the administration’s rationale for the citizenship question — to help enforce voting rights — appeared to be contrived.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who, along with civil rights groups, fought the citizenship question in court, vowed to challenge the order.

“No one ceases to be a person because they lack documentation,” James said. “Under the law, every person residing in the U.S. during the census, regardless of status, must be counted.”

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.

By Kevin Freking and Mike Schneider for StarTribune
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