Trump’s bid to exclude immigrants from census hits amajor roadblock

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has hit a snag in its quest to exclude immigrants living in the country illegally from being counted in census numbers for apportionment: The Census Bureau now says it will be unable to produce state population counts from the 2020 survey before President Donald Trump leaves office Jan. 20.

Bureau staffers told Commerce Department officials this week that the data wouldn’t be ready until late January or possibly February, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Since August, the bureau had been scrambling to finish the count and process the data in time for Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to deliver it to the president by the statutory deadline of Dec. 31.

Bureau officials said in October that they were doing their best to produce the data as close to that date as possible, and internal documents have suggested they were aiming for early January.

Delivering the numbers by the end of the year or early 2021 would mean condensing the normally five-month processing period down to around half that amount.

But on Thursday, Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham issued a statement saying “certain processing anomalies” had been discovered during post-count analysis, adding, “I am directing the Census Bureau to utilize all resources available to resolve this as expeditiously as possible.”

The bureau declined to confirm or deny that the estimated delivery date for state population counts had changed, and the Commerce Department didn’t reply to a request for comment.

Dillingham said such anomalies had occurred in past censuses, and census experts said finding and correcting them is a normal part of the post-count analysis.

“That’s why the bureau builds five months into the schedule for data processing,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director of the House census oversight subcommittee.

“Glitches are bound to arise in such a complex operation, and the bureau needs time to fix those mistakes. If it doesn’t, the quality and accuracy of the final numbers are compromised. And that would raise questions about whether the results should be used for various purposes, including, in the first instance, congressional apportionment.”