Donald Trump Jr. on Sunday tweeted his support of Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) and Alabama’s lawsuit against the federal government for counting illegal aliens, rather than citizens, in congressional seat apportionment and the dividing up of electoral college votes.
The tweet shared a Breitbart article about an exclusive interview in which Brooks said that if congressional seats and electoral college votes continue to be divided up based on all persons in each area — including illegal aliens — rather than strictly the number of American citizens, the state of Alabama will likely lose a congressional seat.
Maybe this explains why Democrats are so much more concerned about illegals than they are about their own constituents!
Mo Brooks: The 15M Illegal Aliens in U.S. Give Blue States 20 Congressional Seats https://t.co/rjSxvMOQZj via @BreitbartNews
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 10, 2018
“We’re probably in the neighborhood of about 15 million illegal aliens in America now,” Brooks said on “Breitbart News Saturday.”
He emphasized, “15 million comes out to roughly 20 congressional seats and 20 electoral college votes. Each congressional seat has roughly 700,000 to 800,000 people in it.”
For Brooks, it is clear that Democrats are being unjustly advantaged.
“[Y]ou’re talking about … 20 electoral college votes and congressmen that are taken from states that follow our laws, that help our border patrol agents, and help our ICE agents … shifting those 20 congressional seats and 20 electoral college seats to states like California that have large numbers of illegal aliens in them,” Brooks explained.
As Breitbart News has reported in the past, “the counting of only American citizens to divide up congressional districts and electoral college votes would shift power away from the affluent, metropolitan coastal cities of the U.S. and towards middle America.”
For Brooks, counting illegal immigrants in the census is a constitutional issue.
“I personally believe that’s wrong, on a policy level, but I also believe it violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution because it dilutes the voting power of citizens who live in states that don’t harbor an enormous number of illegal aliens,” Brooks outlined.
The state of Alabama, led by Attorney General Steve Marshall with the support of Governor Kay Ivey and Brooks, filed a lawsuit in May challenging the federal government’s plan to include illegal aliens in the 2020 Census. Marshall also testified during a hearing of the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice this summer, defending the lawsuit.
“Alabama is set to lose one of its seven congressional seats and one of its nine electoral votes – a seat and a vote it would not lose if illegal aliens were excluded from the apportionment base,” Marshall told the congressional subcommittee.
He added, “Not only would this skewed result rob the State of Alabama and its legal residents of their rightful share of representation, but it plainly undermines the rule of law. If an individual’s presence in our country is in violation of federal law, why should the states in which they reside benefit from their illegal status?”
The stakes are high for the Yellowhammer State, which is affirmed by Ivey’s recent creation of the “Alabama Counts! Census Committee.”
This group will help encourage maximum participation in the 2020 Census by raising Alabamians’ awareness of the importance of participating.
“If we do not reach maximum participation, we will be at serious risk of losing a congressional seat … and, very importantly, federal funding for Alabama. Both of these are crucial for our state’s future,” Ivey said last month.
Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA) Director Kenneth Boswell emphasized the funding part of the equation.
“The stakes are very high in terms of dollars that are coming into the state,” he said.
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
