SNEAKY WORKAROUND

Trump Administration Is Building Massive New Citizenship Database to Get Around Census Question

The information could be used to guide future political mapmaking—or identify more undocumented immigrants.

Remember when courts blocked the Trump administration from asking the deeply controversial citizenship question on the 2020 Census forms? Well, it seems to have found a workaround. According to a report from NPR, the administration is gathering a load of different types of government records to try to determine the citizenship status of every person living in the country. The Census Bureau is reportedly compiling IRS tax forms, data from Medicare and Medicaid, and driver’s license records. That’s on top of records from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, the State Department, the U.S. Army, federal prisons, and the Department of the Interior's law-enforcement system. The information could be used to guide future political mapmaking and allow for redistricting plans to be based on the number of citizens old enough to vote—rather than the total number of people there. A GOP strategist previously said such a move would be “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.” Immigration advocates fear the information could be used to locate undocumented people to target for deportation.