In late January, the State of Missouri sued the Department of Commerce arguing that temporary and undocumented residents should not be counted in the Decennial Census. The state is not only looking to change how the department collects information for the 2030 Census, but are also seeking that the nation redo the 2020 Census under this policy. Because the Trump Administration has already backed Missouri’s position in the past, MIRA has little faith that the administration will fully and faithfully advocate in court to protect the Census. We now find ourselves in the strange position of intervening in this case on the side of the Trump Administration to vigorously defend against this lawsuit and protect a full and accurate count of the US population. We are joined in this endeavor by the NAACP, ACLU, New York Immigration Coalition, Make the Road – New York, and other civil rights organizations. You can visit our website for more information and to read the memo supporting our intervention in the case, which was filed last week.
Following a couple of disastrous days of hearings on Capitol Hill, Secretary Kristi Noem was removed from her position as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday. Noem had been the driving force in implementing the administration’s inhumane immigration enforcement policy and faced stiff questions from both sides of the aisle about repeated, indefensible violations of the rights of US citizens, including the shooting deaths of Rene Good and Alex Pretti. Following her testimony before the Senate on Tuesday, Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski called for her to step down from her leadership of the out-of-control agency. Over social media, the president has said that he has selected Senator Markwayne Mullin to replace her at the agency, although Sen. Mullin will need to go through Senate confirmation before taking over as the secretary.
Following a data sharing agreement last year between ICE and the IRS, a federal judge ruled last week that the IRS had violated the law nearly 43,000 times by sharing information in violation of laws protecting the confidentiality of taxpayer information. This represents only a small share of the requests that ICE has submitted to the IRS; the IRS has provided records of 47,000 taxpayers out of the 1.28 million records that ICE has requested. While the government has already appealed this decision, it is only one of many lawsuits against the data sharing agreement, and two other courts have issued preliminary injunctions to block the transfer of confidential information.