Two courts have said the Trump administration can’t include a citizenship question on the 2020 census, and the Supreme Court will hear the issue in April, but, question or no question, the Census Bureau intends to collect citizenship information on millions of immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security and the Census Bureau are working out an agreement for DHS to hand over information about noncitizens.
The Associated Press reports that the data to be shared includes “noncitizens' full names and addresses, birth dates and places, as well as Social Security numbers and highly sensitive alien registration numbers.” And while a Census Bureau spokesman was all, “Ho hum, nothing to see here” about it, saying that the agency “routinely enters into agreements to receive administrative records from many agencies,” the AP describes this case as anything but routine. In fact, the words used are “apparently unprecedented,” with six former officials saying they’d never heard of such a thing.
”Generally, the information kept in a system of records is presumed to be private and can't be released unless it fits with a certain set of defined exceptions,” a former Obama administration DHS official said.
The Trump administration just never lets up in its determination and creativity when it comes to doing awful things to vulnerable people.