Grand Canyon Times

Steve Cortes, the founder of the League of American Workers, is emphasizing the necessity of a citizen-only census for the redistricting process and maintaining the balance of power in the Legislature. He underscored that while the Constitution mandates the counting of all residents, ensuring districts are counted by citizenship population, rather than overall population, is essential.

“While the Constitution mandates the counting of all residents of the country, a citizenship question makes eminent sense and we should pass this kind of sensible legislation to make sure that districts are counted by citizenship population, not overall population,” Cortes told Grand Canyon Times. 

Cortes expressed his concerns about the recent unanimous vote by Senate Democrats to include illegal immigrants in the national census, labeling the move as indicative of a shift in Democratic priorities. 

“The radical Democrats of this era are not your parents' or grandparents' Democrats!” Cortes said. “They repeatedly prioritize illegal immigrants over the rights, prosperity, and prerogatives of American citizens.” 

Cortes did not mince words when discussing the broader implications of the issue, asserting that the influx of illegal immigrants into the country is not coincidental. 

“Flooding America with masses of illegals is clearly done by design, a large-scale partisan political scheme concocted by Biden and his cronies,” Cortes said.  

Cortes has served as a contributor to Fox News and CNN and is a former operative for the Trump campaign as well as a spokesperson for the Hispanic 100. He authors the Substack newsletter "Patria with Steve Cortes."

State Rep. Justin Heap (R-Mesa) proposed that Arizona conduct a separate census in 2030 and subsequent decades, focusing solely on tallying U.S. citizens to redraw state legislative districts— a move prompted by concerns over illegal immigration. 

"It becomes a problem that citizenship is not going to be a standard for how we apportion out who's going to vote," Heap told Capitol Media Services. 

Heap believes using only citizen counts for redistricting would ensure a fairer representation of eligible voters, particularly amid recent border surges during the Biden Administration, while federal census data would still dictate congressional apportionment due to federal law.

"That's going to throw off Arizona districts," Heap told Capitol Media Services. "It’s going to concentrate districts that have large numbers of non-citizens living in it are going to be over-represented in the legislature where districts that have fewer people but more citizens are going to get less. So that is a substantial problem." 

A similar proposal to exclude illegal immigrants from being counted in the national census faced opposition when U.S. Senate Democrats unanimously voted against the proposal by U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty's (R-Tenn.).

This move comes in response to an amendment proposed by Hagerty to the Equal Representation Act, requiring the inclusion of a citizenship question in future censuses, resulting in the exclusion of non-U.S. citizens, including those with temporary visas and green cards, from congressional district and Electoral College apportionments.

Despite being attached to a $460 billion government spending package, the measure was rejected 45-51, failing to garner a single Democratic vote.

Hagerty accused Democrats of politicizing the issue, vowing to continue pushing for it in the Senate, reiterating his belief that Democrats are leveraging illegal immigration and sanctuary cities to bolster their political power, a claim he has made previously, pointing to roughly 200 sanctuary cities, counties, and states across the U.S., including prominent ones like New Orleans, New York City and Washington, D.C.