By Jonathan Topaz, Skadden Fellow, ACLU Voting Rights Project. Originally published in ACLU's Speak Freely.
On Nov. 6, Americans will head to the polls to exercise their right to vote. The day before, the ACLU will head to trial to try to prevent the Trump administration from diluting the political influence of millions of people for years to come.
In March, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that for the first time in 70 years the decennial census questionnaire will ask respondents whether or not they are U.S. citizens. Secretary Ross has admitted that including this citizenship question will result in the census undercounting an estimated 1 percent of the population — more than 3 million people — because, in his own words, there are “folks who may not feel comfortable answering” the citizenship question.
The folks who won’t want to answer a citizenship question on the census are largely members of immigrant communities of color whom the Trump administration has targeted since it came to power. This includes both non-citizens and U.S. citizens, many of whom may fear that participating will expose their non-citizen family members, neighbors, or loved ones to repercussions.
The census already has a history of undercounting communities of color. In the 1990 census, Hispanic Americans were undercounted by about 5 percent. In 2010, the census failed to count 1.5 million Latino and Black people. In 2020, the Census Bureau will ask for citizenship information – a move that will dissuade millions from responding and make the undercounting problem far, far worse.
Why does an undercount matter?
For one, the census population count is used to apportion representation in Congress, allocate votes in the Electoral College, and draw congressional and state legislative districts. Apportionment is based on the number of people who live in a district, regardless of their legal status.
If the citizenship question goes forward and the census experiences a sizeable undercount, states with large immigrant populations could very well lose political representation in Congress. An undercount would also shift power away from urban areas — since about 61 percent of undocumented immigrants live in just 20 U.S. cities —and toward rural areas, which already have disproportionate political power as a result of the Electoral College and the Senate.
Congressional and state legislative districts in immigrant-heavy cities like San Antonio, Houston, and Miami will receive the same number of representatives as non-urban districts in the same state, despite having larger populations — a situation that dilutes the political power of urban immigrant communities.
In other words, immigrant communities of color will get less electoral representation than other U.S. residents, attacking the fundamental idea of equal representation. And Latino citizens — already disproportionately burdened by a wave of voter suppression efforts such as laws requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — again face a significant threat to their political influence.
What’s more, census data also determines how an estimated $900 billion in funding for crucial social service, health, and education programs is allocated. If immigrants are undercounted, that means the communities in which they live are likely to receive less Title I funding for elementary and secondary schools, less funding for children’s health insurance coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and less Medicaid funding.
Here’s the saddest part: the Trump administration knows all of this. The entire purpose of the census survey, as required by the Constitution, is to get an accurate headcount of all “persons” living in the U.S., regardless of citizenship status. So why is the administration is charging ahead with a question that they’ve already conceded will undercount more than three million people?
Simply put, the administration doesn’t want certain people to count. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — who played a key role in adding the question, along with former White House adviser Steve Bannon — said clearly that the goal of the citizenship question was to move toward “excluding illegal aliens from the apportionment process.”
Attacks on immigrants have become a hallmark of the Trump administration, and with the citizenship question, the administration is attempting to do 10 years’ worth of damage in one go. The trial that starts on Nov. 5 seeks to stop this plan, which intentionally discriminates against immigrants and communities of color and violates the constitutional mandate to count the U.S. population accurately.
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Monday, October 29, 2018 - 7:00pm
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Blog by Steven K. Choi, Executive Director, New York Immigration Coalition. Originally published in ACLU's Speak Freely.
Almost a decade ago, I ran the Minkwon Center for Community Action, a grassroots organization serving the Korean-American community in Queens. Getting immigrants to participate in the 2010 census was one of our top priorities. Why? Because I knew we could use the census to build power for our communities, just by standing up and being counted. And we did, but it wasn’t easy.
First, we had to educate people about the census's importance. After all, it's not just a head count. The census determines how billions of federal dollars are allocated on a state and national level, and it is also used to draw political districts, thus determining political representation.
Our educational effort required breaking down communication barriers by organizing volunteers and literature that could reach the 40 different languages and dialects that people speak in our section of Queens. It also meant addressing the real fears that immigrants, particularly those of color, have about turning personal information over to the government. We spent months knocking on doors, meeting with community members, and holding trainings to overcome these challenges.
But once we broke it down for them, our community realized that the census could indeed be a powerful tool not only to ensure that our communities got the federal dollars they needed but also to build our political power. The end result was the creation of three Asian-American-majority political districts and the election of Rep. Grace Meng — a true champion for our communities — to New York’s first-ever Asian American-plurality congressional district.
Now, nearly 10 years later, I am preparing for the 2020 census, this time as the head of the New York Immigration Coalition, which represents over 200 immigrant and refugee rights groups throughout the state.
I wish I could say that we’re building upon the last decade’s progress, but unfortunately, we will have to work much harder to make the same case. For the first time in 70 years, the Trump administration had added a citizenship question to the census, which is a surefire way of scaring immigrants away from participating.
Immigrant communities of color, who historically have been reluctant to engage with government officials, are even more reluctant now — and for good reason. Whether it is the Muslim ban, the rescission of DACA for Dreamers, or proposing to end family-based immigration, the Trump administration has shown hostility to immigrant communities at every turn.
By adding a citizenship question to the decennial census, the Trump administration is taking a campaign to intimidate and marginalize immigrants into the homes of every New Yorker. The citizenship question threatens to put all immigrant respondents, as well as their families, loved ones, and neighbors, in a bind: Identify your status to a hostile administration or risk the loss of critical federal resources and political power.
Our member organizations have already witnessed the ripple effect. For example, at the Chinese-American Planning Council’s childhood development program, parents have been asking staff whether “the law” requires them to fill out the census and about the penalties for not answering. They also ask what would happen if they don’t answer a question during an in-person visit or if ICE would drop by if they indicate that there is a noncitizen living in their home.
Should the citizenship question go forward, the state of New York could suffer a huge loss of resources and political power if immigrants are too scared to participate.
That’s why we’re working to combat Trump’s attack. Together with over 80 partners statewide, we’ve formed New York Counts 2020, a coalition to maximize participation in the census and began our census education and outreach efforts in March. We’ve spent at least $93,000 on census-related activities this year that we would not have otherwise.
In June, we became plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit brought by the ACLU challenging the addition of the citizenship question, alongside four other immigrants’ rights groups.
The Trump administration has attempted many times to stop the lawsuit, but the courts have repeatedly denied each request. In the course of the suit, we’ve found that the citizenship question has the fingerprints of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former senior adviser, and Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, all over it. Both of them have advanced the White House’s anti-immigrant agenda.
The trial begins on Monday, and we’re packing every inch of that courtroom. Those who try to circumvent the constitutionally mandated count of all people living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be held accountable.
Date
Monday, November 5, 2018 - 4:00pm
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According to
documents released Tuesday by the Project on Government Oversight, earlier this year Amazon employees met with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to market “Rekognition” — the company’s facial recognition technology that we have been
sounding the alarm on for months.
The prospect of the Trump administration using facial recognition to supercharge its deportation machine is very alarming indeed. So to find out what’s happening, we filed a Freedom of Information Act requeston Wednesday demanding that the Department of Homeland Security release information relating to where and how it intends to use facial recognition as well as who it has purchased the technology from.
Amazon boasts that Rekognition can be used for surveillance on a massive scale, like tracking people in real-time, tagging over 100 people in a photograph, or identifying people just walking down the street. ICE has not released any information explaining what uses of Rekognition it has explored or whether it intends to buy it (or other face surveillance technology) to assist with immigration enforcement efforts. If ICE does plan to use this technology, it would be a significant cause for concern.
ICE has historically relied on biometrics — primarily fingerprints — as a way of expanding its immigration enforcement capabilities. Through government programs like “Secure Communities,” the fingerprints of people arrested by local police are matched against ICE databases. In cases where ICE claims someone is undocumented, the agency can issue a request that someone be held for 48 hours so that they can be transferred to ICE custody. In 2017, ICE issued over 142,000 such detainer requests.
The use of biometrics in this way has fueled the current mass detention and deportation efforts, which terrorize immigrant communities throughout the country, resulting in countless errors, deportations without due process, and increased racial profiling. Worse still, ICE is an agency that often acts with
impunity, operating with a record
$7.1 billion budget with inadequate oversight and accountability.
If ICE is seeking to augment its existing biometric matching with facial recognition, the impact on immigrant communities could be even more striking. Using just a photo, it could make it easier to track and apprehend people as they attend a protest or walk their kids to school. And given the high rates of inaccuracy of facial recognition on communities of color the inevitable mistakes could be disastrous.
In July, we released a test showing that Amazon Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress with mugshot photos, with members of color incorrectly matched at a disproportionately higher rate. After this, a bipartisan group of 25 House members, including civil rights legend John Lewis (D-Ga.), sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demanding a meeting and writing, “[W]e are alarmed about the deleterious impact this tool — if left unchecked — will have on communities of color; immigrants; protestors peaceably assembling and others petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances; or any other marginalized group.”
In a recent statement to The Washington Post, ICE said that it had used face recognition in the past to assist in “criminal investigations.” This is disturbing given that Congress has never authorized this use, ICE has not publicly disclosed any policies or procedures, and the inherent civil liberties risks of the technology.
Amazon shouldn’t be arming an out-of-control agency with additional means for targeting immigrants. And if the government is planning to use this powerful surveillance tool, the public has a right to know how.
Date
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 - 12:15pm
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