CENSUS CAN’T MEET DEADLINE

The president plans to remove immigrants in the country without authorization from the count.

In a blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to strip unauthorized immigrants from census totals used for reapportionment, Census Bureau officials have concluded that they cannot produce the state population totals required to reallocate seats in the House of Representatives until after President Donald Trump leaves office in January.

The president said in July that he planned to remove immigrants who are in the country without authorization from the count for the first time. That would leave an older and whiter population as the basis for divvying up House seats, a shift likely to increase the number of House seats held by Republicans over the next decade.

But Wednesday, according to three bureau officials, the Census Bureau told the Commerce Department that a growing number of snags in the massive data- processing operation that generates population totals had delayed the completion of population calculations at least until Jan. 26, and perhaps to mid- February. Those officials spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the Trump administration.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department oversees the bureau, was informed of the holdup Wednesday evening, those people and others said. The Commerce Department and the Census Bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The director of the Census Bureau, Steven Dillingham, acknowledged a delay in a statement issued Thursday but did not explicitly rule out delivering reapportionment totals before Trump’s term ends.

“During post- collection processing, certain processing anomalies have been discovered,” the statement said.

“These types of processing anomalies have occurred in past censuses. I am directing the Census Bureau to utilize all resources available to resolve this as expeditiously as possible. As it has been all along, our goal remains an accurate and statistically sound census.”

It’s not clear whether Dillingham’s directive will force the bureau to overcome the obstacles the processing delays pose to Trump’s plan to upend the centuries- old formula for allotting seats in the House.

Under law, the White House must send a state- by- state census tally to the House of Representatives next year that will be used to reallocate House seats among the states. On Trump’s order, the Census Bureau is attempting to compile a separate state- bystate tally of unauthorized immigrants so that their numbers can be subtracted from official census results before they are dispatched to the House.

That cannot happen — and Trump’s plan will become moot — if the census totals are not completed before Trump leaves office Jan. 20.

It is possible that the administration could still order the bureau to produce the state- by- state population data before the president’s term ends, regardless of data processing problems that affect its accuracy.

But experts on census issues said it was unclear whether the bureau’s career staffers — data scientists and other experts who have devoted their careers to an accurate head count — would carry out such an order or instead resign en masse.