Donald Trump arouses embarrassment with his decision to no longer count undocumented migrants
The Supreme Court examined Monday, November 30, Donald Trump's decision to exclude undocumented migrants from the census.
AP - J. Scott Applewhite
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
The Supreme Court was examining Monday, November 30, Donald Trump's decision to exclude undocumented migrants from the population census.
According to the Constitution, the census must take place every ten years in the United States.
It conditions the granting of federal aid to the States, and above all, the number of elected representatives to the House of Representatives.
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With our correspondent in Washington,
Anne Corpet
In July, while the census was underway,
Donald Trump
ordered his government to remove undocumented migrants when the number of elected officials was allocated.
The Republican President had explained that he did not want to "
give parliamentary representation to foreigners
" in an irregular situation.
A decision which had been rejected in first instance by the courts.
Puzzled judges
But the US president has asked the nine judges of the highest authority in the country to intervene urgently, Donald Trump being supposed to transmit to Congress in early January the results of the 2020 census and the number of seats allocated to each state.
They therefore discussed Monday, November 30 by telephone interposed because of the pandemic.
"
The president has the power to determine that certain illegal immigrants do not have stable ties with the states,
" argued Jeffrey Wall on behalf of the Republican administration.
Unsurprisingly, his arguments failed to convince the three progressive Supreme Court justices.
Even
Amy Coney Barrett
, newly appointed by Donald Trump, seemed to question the merits of the president's request.
"
You know that immigrants, even illegal immigrants, have never been excluded from the census
", recalled the conservative judge.
A crucial issue
The nine wise men questioned the lawyer on the scope of this ban: is it to exclude from the census migrants threatened with deportation?
Or the ten million illegal immigrants present on American soil?
The government lawyer was unable to say whether the measure would relate only to some 60,000 migrants in detention centers, to the 200,000 threatened with deportation or to all irregular immigrants.
The stake is however crucial.
If illegal immigrants were no longer counted in the census, California could for example lose a seat in the House of Representatives.
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