The Justice Department has talked about the possibility that federal law protecting the confidentiality of responses to the U.S. census may be reconsidered, an internal Trump administration email reveals, NPR has reported.
Sharing census information about individuals with law enforcement officers may "come up later for renewed debate," former Justice Department official Ben Aguiñaga suggested to John Gore, then the acting head of the civil rights division, in a June 12 email talking about an Obama-era memo issued by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
The email exchange was about draft responses to congressional inquiries to Gore, with the specific question about the 2010 memo coming from Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez. It was made public in a court filing in a lawsuit challenging the addition of a citizenship question to the census.
The email exchange has raised concerns among civil rights and immigrant organizations already deeply troubled about the Trump administration’s motivation for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, according to The Huffington Post.
These groups have been fighting the addition of the question, saying that immigrants and others won’t respond to the census for fear of revealing their immigration status to the Trump administration.
Gomez, in a statement to NPR, said the emails showed the Trump administration was “using every tool at their disposal to vilify our immigrant communities, including the 2020 census.”
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