Census Bureau halts count of unauthorized immigrants

The U.S. Census Bureau has stopped working on President Donald Trump’s directive to come up with a count of unauthorized immigrants that would be used to adjust the population figures that are used to reallocate each state’s number of congressional seats every 10 years, NPR reports. 

Senior officials at the bureau have told the team assigned to working on the count to stop their work on Tuesday night, according to NPR. The president has tried to exclude undocumented immigrants from census data that is used for determining congressional representation in each state through the memorandum issued in July.

A panel of federal judges found the directive to be unconstitutional in September. The 14th Amendment states that representatives will be apportioned by “counting the whole number of persons in each state.” The case against the directive was then brought to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that it would be “premature” to make a decision on the case because it is “riddled with contingencies and speculation.”

Several leaders and organizations that have been active in census work in New York, such as the New York Immigration Coalition and Asian American Federation, celebrated the news. Julie Menin, who led New York City’s census efforts and is now running for New York City Council, simply tweeted: “VICTORY!!!”