The U.S. Census Bureau is asking states for drivers' license records that typically include citizenship data and has made a new request for information on recipients of government assistance, alarming some civil-rights advocates.
The two approaches, documented by The Associated Press, come amid President Donald Trump's efforts to make citizenship a key aspect of federal information-gathering in the run-up to the 2020 census, despite this year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a specific citizenship question can't be included in the 2020 census questionnaire.
Civil-rights advocates worry that the wider net being cast by the Trump administration for such information could chill Hispanic participation in the population count, which will determine how many congressional seats each state gets and guide the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funding. The results of the 2020 census also will be used to redraw state and local electoral maps.
After the Supreme Court ruling, Trump signed an executive order in July requiring the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, to collect records on citizenship from federal agencies and increase efforts "to obtain State administrative records concerning citizenship."
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators told the AP that most, if not all, states recently received requests for information including citizenship status, race, birth dates and addresses. The association has advised members to consult their privacy officers, and "each state is making their own determination how to respond," spokeswoman Claire Jeffrey said in an email.
In Illinois, Secretary of State Jesse White denied the request.
"We, as a general rule, are not comfortable with giving out our data, certainly not in such a huge amount. That was the overriding concern," said spokesman Dave Druker.
Other states are weighing what to do. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has received the request but hasn't responded, spokeswoman Beth Frady said.
Motor vehicle agency records are notoriously inaccurate and "bad at determining when someone is not a citizen," said Andrea Senteno, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is challenging Trump's executive order.
The bureau also is seeking more state records on individual recipients of public programs. A new request published last month in the Federal Register said the records would be used for the 2020 census and other research, and they're needed to "improve efficiency and accuracy in our data collections, and to improve measures of the population and economy."
The records request doesn't explicitly ask for citizenship information, but some demographers who work with the bureau on state-level data suspect it's responsive to the president's executive order.
"The timing of it, and noticing in the executive order, it's well-stated that this is going to be a push directing the Census Bureau to work on gathering these state inputs; it would lead me to believe that the two are probably connected," said Susan Strate, senior manager of Population Estimates Program at the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute.
In a statement Thursday, the Census Bureau said it started requesting state administrative records in 2016 to help with the 2020 census and ongoing surveys. The records include birth dates, addresses, race, Hispanic origin and citizenship status. The bureau didn't answer why it was requesting drivers' license information or why it had made the new request last month for state administrative records when it already receives records from states.
The bureau said the records it receives are stripped of identifiable information and used for statistical purposes only.
A Section on 10/15/2019