President Joe Biden has ordered the Commerce Department to include illegal immigrants in the U.S. Census count for the apportionment of members to the House of Representatives, reversing the Trump administration policy which critics failed to halt by court action.
"The Secretary [of Commerce] shall report the tabulation of total population by state that reflects the whole number of persons whose usual residence was in each state as of the designated census date in section 141(a) of title 13, United States Code, without regard to immigration status," the executive order signed Wednesday reads in part.
It specified the revocation of former President Donald Trump's executive order that directed the Census Bureau to calculate the number of illegal aliens and exclude them from the count used for allocating House districts to the various states and thus Electoral College votes as well.
"Executive Order 13880 of July 11, 2019 [Collecting Information About Citizenship Status in Connection With the Decennial Census], and the Presidential Memorandum of July 21, 2020 [Excluding Illegal Aliens From the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census], are hereby revoked," it said.
The Trump administration missed an end-of-year deadline for completing the decennial count.
Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union sued to block the policy but the case was thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court in December.
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