Assignment 9- Public State Records

A woman enters a Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles drivers license service centre in Hialeah, Florida [Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo]

The Census Bureau is asking states to voluntarily share driver's license records as part of the Trump administration's efforts to produce detailed data about the U.S. citizenship status of every person living in the country. Officials said in a statement Tuesday that the agency had expanded its request for records in response to Trump’s order, which was issued after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked his administration’s efforts to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. Civil rights advocates worry that the wider net being cast by the Trump administration for such information could chill Latino 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 Census Bureau is asking states to voluntarily share driver's license records as part of the Trump administration's efforts to produce detailed data about the U.S. citizenship status of every person living in the country. The Bureau has also made a request for information on people who receive government assistance. 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".