US census may see record Latino undercount
Even with citizenship question abandoned, immigrants still fear potential risks
LAREDO, Texas — Jeanette Silva still hasn’t decided what she will do when a census packet arrives at her home a few miles from the banks of the Rio Grande.
The 40-year-old pastor feels conflicted — torn between what she sees as the benefits it could offer her community, including her daughter, along with the potential risks for her undocumented husband.
“My little girl will have more support,” said Silva of the couple’s 4-year-old, Deborah. “But there is always an uneasiness, a fear — especially right now — of federal officials.”
Last month, as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, President Donald Trump abandoned his efforts to add a citizenship question to next year’s census. Now activists nationwide are campaigning to assure immigrants it is safe to participate in the once-a-decade tally that determines how federal money and power is apportioned.
But many here fear that irreparable harm already has been done, and they are bracing for a record undercount.
Among the groups most at risk of not being fully tallied are children younger than 5. For decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has struggled to count that demographic. In 2010, roughly 2 million were omitted, more than any other age group.
The problem is more severe for Latino children, who accounted for 40 percent of those under 5 who were missed in the last tally.
Webb County, Texas, home to Laredo, ranked the worst nationwide, according to data provided by William O’Hare, a demographer who has studied the 2010 undercount for the Census Bureau.
The most pronounced undercounts have come in areas that, like Laredo, have large populations of undocumented immigrants, O’Hare found.
Some demographers expect the pattern to worsen.
Laredo is predicted to have one of the lowest response rates to the 2020 census, according to the Census Bureau. Southern California cities like Los Angeles and border communities also rank among the country’s toughest to fully count.
The impacts of another undercount will be far-reaching, said Cassie Davis, a research analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a think tank based in Austin.
“When young children are not counted properly,” Davis said, “it affects them for their whole childhood.”
Census data is used to distribute nearly $900 billion in annual federal funding, supporting schools, healthcare, food stamps, foster care and special education. Latino children, who disproportionately live in poverty, are among the most in need of government help.
In Texas, some local officials have estimated that they will receive as much as $1,578 less per year in federal funding for each person who is not counted in next year’s census.
The Census Bureau says a complex set of social and economic challenges contribute to why Latino children are overlooked, citing, among other factors, language barriers and frequent moves between rental units for some families. The agency is banking on outreach, education and reforms to how the count is administered to encourage as many people as possible to participate.
Potentially frustrating those efforts is Trump’s failed attempt to add a citizenship question to next year’s count. The move aligned with the president’s vows to crack down on illegal immigration but ultimately faltered despite his threats to move forward even after the Supreme Court ruling. Nonetheless, the White House effort drew wide publicity and many here in Webb County are now concerned that information collected by the census could be used to find and deport people who are in the country illegally. The agency, for its part, says census responses are confidential and can be used only for statistical purposes.
“To most people the Census Bureau is not any different from ICE,” said Deborah Griffin, a retired Census Bureau researcher, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which conducts deportations.
In Webb County, where 96 percent of residents are Latino, “everyone knows someone who is undocumented,” said Arturo Garcia, director of the Laredo Community Development Department.
Garcia sits on the recently formed Complete Count Committee, which is made up of city and county leaders, and is focused on ensuring that nobody goes uncounted. Recent headlines about ICE raids, he said, have put the community on edge.