Trump considering executive order to add citizenship question on 2020 census
President Trump said he is pondering the idea of issuing an executive order to ensure a controversial citizenship question is included on the 2020 U.S. census.
“We have four or five ways we can do it. It’s one of the ways that we are thinking about doing it very seriously,” he told reporters before departing the White House for Bedminster, New Jersey, on Friday.
Former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) told FOX Business the citizenship question should be on the census because it determines the distribution of funds and each state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I think it’s very, very important and they do so much data. There’s other questions in the census form and they combine all that and that’s how we find out about our country,” she said on “Cavuto: Coast-to-Coast.”
Brewer faced similar hurdles as governor of Arizona and signed into law the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act in 2010. The legislative act requires aliens above the age of 18 to possess proper identification at all times and failure to do so is considered a federal misdemeanor crime.
“We worked on it diligently. We had good attorneys, and we processed it through the legislator and it passed, and we got it enforced and it’s important to have people documented in our country,” Brewer said of how she was able to get one of the most stringent anti-immigration measures passed.
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The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the Trump administration and found the Commerce Department didn’t provide a more compelling case for the inclusion of the question. The Justice Department on Friday told a federal judge that the White House will continue to explore options of adding the citizenship question to the 2020 census.