Census wants halt in immigrant raids for survey

updated 8:50 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Census Bureau wants immigration agents to suspend enforcement raids during the 2010 census so the government can better count illegal immigrants.

Raids during the population count would make an already distrustful group even less likely to cooperate with government workers who are supposed to include them, the Census Bureau’s second-ranking official said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Deputy Director Preston Jay Waite said immigration enforcement officials did not conduct raids for several months before and after the 2000 census. But today’s political climate is even more volatile on the issue of illegal immigration.

Enforcement agents “have a job to do,” Waite said. “They may not be able to give us as much of a break” in 2010.

Pat Reilly, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to say whether immigration officials would halt raids. “If we were, we wouldn’t talk about it,” she said.

“We would have to discuss this at the highest levels of both agencies,” Reilly said.

Republicans, Democrats and the White House have been at odds over how to resolve the fate of an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. After Congress failed to pass an immigration overhaul sought by the president, the Bush administration said last week that it would step up efforts to enforce immigration laws.

'It's nuts'
One lawmaker said she thinks “it’s nuts” for the Census Bureau to ask for a break in enforcement.

“I don’t know what country the Census Bureau is living in,” Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., said in a telephone interview from her district. “I can tell them the American people have grown sick and tired of their immigration laws not being enforced. They are not going to tolerate enforcement being suspended for any amount of time.”

The Constitution requires the Census Bureau to count everyone, including illegal immigrants, in the census. The once-a-decade population count is then used to apportion seats in Congress and to appropriate billions of dollars in federal spending each year.

Miller has introduced a constitutional amendment that would apportion seats in Congress based only on the number of U.S. citizens in each state.

The Census Bureau plans to approach all federal agencies for help in getting an accurate count, Waite said.

Illegal immigrants are notoriously hard to count, although outside experts estimate that census workers count 85 percent to 90 percent of them.

Census workers ask immigrants if they are citizens; they do not ask if they are in the country legally.

“We’re supposed to count every resident. If you go out and ask, ’Are you here illegally?’ they are going to run,” said Kenneth Prewitt, who directed the Census Bureau during the 2000 census.

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