Justices skeptical of Trump demand to delete undocumented from census

By Mark Gruenberg

In almost the last gasp of his racist anti-immigrant campaign during his Oval Office tenure, Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 30 not to count everyone in the U.S. Census by excluding undocumented people. His demand drew skepticism from the justices.

The census case is important, and not just to undocumented people. Demographers estimate that if they were omitted, states with high numbers of immigrants, both documented and undocumented—especially New York, California, Florida, Texas and Illinois—would lose counted people and therefore representation in Congress.

And those losses in turn would cost those entire states federal funds, in addition to U.S. House seats and clout in the Electoral College. In states and cities, the losses would cost people of color political influence in legislatures and city councils and the ability to advocate for their communities.