The US Census Bureau is expected to announce it will miss the year-end deadline for reporting population numbers, thereby jeopardizing an announced Trump plan to manipulate the numbers to remove alleged undocumented residents from state and city counts, the Associated Press reports.
The Trump Administration sought to “cook the books” of the official census count so that areas where undocumented immigrants reside do not get proportional representation in Congress or per capita allotments for federal funding.
However, the Census Bureau will miss its December 31st deadline for submitting the data to the White House because of poor management of the decadal process by the administration. Under Trump’s management, the Census Bureau hired US Census “door knockers” in September, five months after it had been done in previous censuses.
Trump ordered in July that Census data would be reported in two tiers, with only one including undocumented immigrants, a system that runs counter to the Constitutional requirement that the Census count “the number” residing in each city and state. This elicited a series of lawsuits challenging Trump’s intent, most of which Trump lost.