Trump administration preparing executive order banning undocumented immigrants from being counted in census

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Mr Trump and his team of hardline immigration advisers – led by domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller – have targeted the annual count of all people living in the United States before, losing a battle last year in July when he dropped a bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Knowing this information is vital to formulating sound public policy.” At that time, the president announced his administration would mandate each federal department give the Commerce Department every record about non-citizens and citizens who are in the United States, claiming such a step was needed to get “an accurate count of the non-citizen population”. Senators Jerry Moran and Jeanne Shaheen, the chairman and vice chairwoman of a Senate spending committee that doles out census funding, wrote Census Director Stephen Dillingham on 7 July saying: “It is imperative for the census to count every person in the United States, where they live, and this includes communities that for various reasons have historically had low participation in decennial censuses.” “We expect that data processing will be free from political interference and that the highest standards of integrity and fairness will be upheld,” the duo wrote. “The results of the census also determine the number of seats each state will have in the US House of Representatives, and they are used to draw congressional and state legislative districts.” After Mr Trump tried to add the citizenship question last year, some immigration advocates warned undocumented migrants were likely to skip filling out their forms, fearing possible deportation.