President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to provide “the maximum assistance permissible†to the Commerce Department to ensure the accuracy of citizenship records relevant to the 2020 decennial census on Thursday. The directive comes after the Supreme Court ruled in Department of Commerce v. New York that the decision to include a citizenship status element in the 2020 decennial census was “substantively invalidâ€.
According to President Trump, the lack of accurate citizenship data poses problems on establishing annual expenditure plans for public benefits programs such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and State Children’s Health Insurance Program in which aliens have limited eligibility.
He noted that the move will provide a more accurate citizenship database than currently available and “has nothing to do with enforcing immigration laws against particular individuals.â€
