Census Bureau quietly seeking immigrants’ legal status: report

The Census Bureau is quietly seeking information on millions of immigrants’ legal status, The Associated Press reported Thursday.

According to the news service, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would give the Census Bureau extensive personal data about immigrants under a pending agreement.

The DHS data would include names, addresses, birth dates and places, Social Security numbers and sensitive alien registration numbers, the AP added, citing a document it obtained.

{mosads}The news service said the DHS data would be more precise than the information collected by the bureau in its household canvassing every 10 years.

The report comes after a federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Commerce Department from adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 U.S. census. 

Judge Richard Seeborg of the Northern District of California said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross failed to offer a plausible reason to add the question to the next census.

“Secretary Ross’s reliance on [Voting Rights Act] enforcement to justify inclusion of the citizenship question was mere pretext and the definition of an arbitrary and capricious governmental act,” Seeborg wrote in his ruling.

“Moreover, Secretary Ross’s conclusion that adding the citizenship question would enable the Census Bureau to obtain more ‘complete and accurate data’ in response to the [Justice Department’s] request is not only unsupported, it is directly contradicted by the scientific analysis contained in the Administrative Record,” Seeborg continued.

A New York judge made a similar ruling in January.

The Supreme Court is due to take up the issue next month.