More hurdles and difficulties await undocumented immigrants living in the United States, particularly the over 400,000 Nigerians in that country, as President Donald Trump has ordered the Commerce Department to immediately begin work on a new census that excludes undocumented immigrants from the once-a-decade tally of people living in the U.S.
With this, the fate of over 400,000 Nigerians living in the U.S. hangs in the balance, as Nigeria has the largest African Diaspora population in the U.S.
In a social media post, Trump announced he directed the Commerce Department to “immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern-day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS,” Trump added.
Amid this, the U.S. Census Bureau says it “collects data from all foreign-born who participate in its censuses and surveys, regardless of legal status” and has done so for its 235-year history. The data determines how the 435 House seats are divided among the 50 states every 10 years.
Trump, in his first term, attempted to change the U.S. census to exclude noncitizens. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the Commerce Department’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census violated federal law.
While reacting to this U.S. new census count development, members of the Organised Private Sector (OPS) in Nigeria disclosed that Trump’s new census exercise is going to be another traumatic situation for Nigerian population living in the U.S. especially undocumented immigrants because it is a calculated attempt by the Trump’s government to throw illegal citizens and undocumented immigrants out of the U.S.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Saturday Telegraph, the Director/ Chief Executive Officer, Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Dr. Muda Yusuf, said the new U.S. census exercise was an opportunity for Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to urgently liaise with the Nigerian Embassy in the U.S. to work out modalities on how to assist undocumented Nigerians living in U.S. via evacuation back to Nigeria peacefully before the U.S.’ Immigration, Custom and Enforcement (ICE) officials arrest them and bundle them to unknown prisons or cells in Rwanda and El Salvador.
Dr. Yusuf said: “It is going to be a very serious challenge for them. Because you know, for most of them, now there is a high level of insecurity; they are living in fear. They no longer have confidence living in the U.S. Many of them cannot go to their places of work, so they hardly earn a living. So it’s going to be a very traumatic situation for Nigerians in the U. S. with Trump’s order on the new census in America.”
He continued: “So my advice should be that our Foreign Affairs Ministry should work with our embassy in the U.S. to ascertain if there is a way to ask people who want to evacuate or leave the U.S. in an orderly, peaceful manner so that our embassy can facilitate their movement out of the U.S. Because the embarrassment of being caught and taken to locations like El Salvador, Rwanda and different places.
“And it is even in a cage they are being taken out. When they are arrested, they are handcuffed and led to the planes as criminals. So for me, I think a suggestion should go to our embassy and the Foreign Affairs Ministry to give Nigerians that window if you know you are undocumented immigrants, if they can arrange with the U.S. officials to give us that permission so that the embassy can evacuate them peacefully back to Nigeria.
“That’s better than the embarrassment of being arrested by ICE in handcuffs and all manner of ill-treatment. And you know that we have a very large population of Nigerians in the U.S. Nigeria has a large Diaspora population in the U.S., over 400,000.”
On the ulterior motive behind the new U.S. census exercise, the CPPE CEO added: “What Trump is saying is he doesn’t want to see any undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Once there are undocumented immigrants, his plan is to arrest and bundle them out of the U.S. He doesn’t want them to reflect in any data at all.”
𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗔𝗽𝗽 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗧𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗔𝘀 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽!
