Census Bureau research suggests asking about citizenship status may discourage noncitizens from participating in the upcoming national head count. That could jeopardize the accuracy of the 2020 census and leave lasting impacts on countless government decisions in the decade after the next national head count. From reapportioning congressional seats and redrawing legislative districts to distributing an estimated $800 billion a year in federal dollars, the population counts from the census are key.
'Potentially untrue' statements?
Ross, who oversees the census, approved adding the new citizenship question in late March, after testifying during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing that the Justice Department "initiated the request" for the question in a December 2017 letter to the Census Bureau. Ross says the Justice Department needs responses to the question to better enforce the Voting Rights Act's provisions against racial discrimination.
But earlier this month, a federal judge in New York City said internal documents the administration previously filed in court as part of the lawsuits suggest Ross' statements "were potentially untrue."
"It now appears that the idea of adding the citizenship question originated with Secretary Ross, not the Department of Justice and that its origins long predated the December 2017 letter from the Justice Department," Judge Jesse Furman said in Manhattan federal court during a July 3 hearing, when he ordered the Commerce Department and Justice Department to release more internal documents about the citizenship question. Furman cited Ross' recent admission that he started considering adding a citizenship question "soon after" his February 2017 confirmation as commerce secretary and that he and his staff asked the DOJ if it would submit a request for the question — a request he would later approve.
'We need to work with' the Justice Department
Other emails released on Monday suggest that from their early days at the Commerce Department, Ross and his staff were determined to use the census to ask about citizenship status — a topic that the Census Bureau has not asked all U.S. households about since 1950.
Ross expressed special interest in learning about the citizenship question that's long been asked of a sample of households for the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, as well as about the process for adding questions to census forms.
In response to Ross' frustrations with delays in adding a citizenship question, the director of the Commerce Department's Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, Earl Comstock, assured Ross in a May 2017 email: "On the citizenship question we will get that in place."
Comstock suggested using the Justice Department as a means for their goal. "We need to work with [the Justice Department] to get them to request that citizenship be added back as a census question," he wrote in the same email. "I will arrange a meeting with [Justice Department] staff this week to discuss."
A Justice Department spokesperson, Devin O'Malley, declined comment on the newly-released emails.
In an email to Ross' chief of staff, Wendy Teramoto, the acting head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, John Gore, appears to refer to the citizenship question request as "a DOJ-DOC issue." A few months ago, Gore represented the Justice Department during a House hearing on the citizenship question, when he dodged many inquiries from lawmakers by citing the DOJ's role in representing the Trump administration in ongoing lawsuits about the question.
According to subsequent emails from September, Gore connected Ross' staff with one of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' advisers, Danielle Cutrona, who wrote to Teramoto, "From what John told me, it sounds like we can do whatever you all need us to do."
About two months later in December 2017, a letter from Justice Department official Arthur Gary requesting a citizenship question was sent to the Census Bureau. An email from the bureau's acting director, Ron Jarmin, shows an early attempt by bureau officials to persuade the Justice Department to forgo requesting a citizenship question and to rely on existing government records about citizenship status instead.
But a later email by Jarmin appears to summarize the Justice Department's resolve for the question. The department's leadership "believe the letter requesting citizenship to be added to the 2020 Census fully describes their request," Jarmin wrote. "They do not want to meet."
The role of Steve Bannon
Previously-released emails revealed that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — the former co-chair of President Trump's now-defunct commission on voter fraud — contacted Ross by phone about adding a citizenship question "at the direction of Steve Bannon," the former White House strategist, a few months before writing a July 2017 email to Teramoto.
An April 2017 email that was written by Ross' executive assistant, Brooke Alexander, to his wife, Hilary Geary Ross, appears to be confirmation of Bannon's involvement. "Steve Bannon has asked that the Secretary talk to someone about the Census," Alexander wrote, adding that Ross "could do it from the car on the way to a dinner."
A spokesperson for Bannon did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.
The Trump administration is expected to release more documents from the Commerce and Justice Departments later this week. "Although DOJ and DOC attorneys have been working diligently, including through the weekend, to make a complete production [by Monday], the volume of documents is larger than anticipated," the government's attorneys wrote in their request to extend the filing deadline until Thursday, which Judge Furman approved.
"No further extensions will be granted," Furman noted in his order.
