By Steph Solis | ssolis@masslive.com
Massachusetts advocates blasted a memo signed by President Donald Trump Tuesday afternoon excluding undocumented immigrants from census counts that determine Congressional representation, calling the move unconstitutional.
“This is just another desperate move for him to try to scare our immigrant community,” said Patricia Sobalvarro, executive director of the Boston-based immigration organization Agencia ALPHA. “I feel it’s just him trying to weaponize the Census and attack our immigrant community.”
Sobalvarro and other immigrant rights advocates in Massachusetts raised concerns about the chilling effect the latest memo has on immigrant communities, who are already hesitant to take part in the decennial count.
The memo instructs U.S. Secretary of Commerce to exclude immigrants without legal status from apportionment after the 2020 Census.
The memo references Trump administration’s efforts to put a citizenship question on the Census, which the U.S. Supreme Court blocked in a decision in July 2019. The memo does not explain how the U.S. Census Bureau could determine citizens from non-citizens and immigrants with legal status from those without immigration status.
Secretary of State William Galvin called the memo “an almost unprecedented effort to politicize the Census,” the State House News Service reported.
As of Tuesday, 64.2% of Massachusetts households have responded to the Census.
The memo has sparked criticism from elected officials, immigration attorneys and advocates who have spent more than a year encouraging foreign-born residents to take part in the count.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it would sue the Trump administration as it did to block the inclusion of a citizenship question.
Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, tweeted that excluding millions of people from being counted is unjust and unconstitutional.
“Everyone deserves to be counted,” Millona tweeted. “Everyone deserves to be represented.”
Roxana Rivera, vice president of 32BJ SEIU, said the contradicts the U.S. Constitution’s mandate of a count to elicit fear in immigrant communities.
“As one of the largest unions in the country with a majority immigrant membership, we support all efforts to defeat this outrage in court and will redouble our efforts to encourage every single person to get counted in Census 2020,” Rivera said.
It’s unclear exactly how many immigrants without legal status live in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center estimated last year that 185,000 undocumented immigrants call the Bay State home.
Agencia ALPHA in Boston, certified by the Board of Immigration Appeals to offer certain legal services, serves clients from more than 60 countries with varying forms of status. Most are from Latin America, but others hail from Greece, Morocco, Bangladesh, Nepal and elsewhere, Sobalvarro said.
The organization had planned to open questionnaire assistance centers and coordinate with churches to draw immigrants and other minorities who are considered historically “hard to count” to take the Census.
Those plans fell apart when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
“We still encounter much resistance and mistrust and people are scared, right?” she said. “Because of their immigration status, it has been an uphill battle and I haven’t even gotten to the COVID part on how that just messed up our outreach efforts.”
When the pandemic hit Massachusetts, Sobalvarro said the organization and others have reached out to residents through phone banks, Facebook Live sessions and communications over WhatsApp and other platforms.
She tells clients the count is key to making sure resources are made available to communities of color, including parts of Boston that were hit hard during the coronavirus pandemic.
While Trump’s memo may make her work harder, Sobalvarro said residents can’t afford not to be counted and lose out on federal funding.
“We’re not going to back down. We’re going to continue to inform, be there for the community and understand that at the end of the day, if we don’t partake in the census, we are hurting our own immigrant communities,” she said.
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