U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to a video teleconference with members of the military forces at the White House.  (Photo: Reuters)

Washington, November 30 (RHC)-- U.S. President Donald Trump is rushing to complete another hard-line policy toward immigration, as he is ending his time in office -- this time with the help of the conservative Supreme Court.

Trump, who lost his bid for re-election on November 3rd, is now seeking the right through the Supreme Court to exclude millions of undocumented immigrants from the census count used to apportion House of Representatives seats and electoral votes.

His outgoing administration is racing to finish the count, and submit a report to Congress, before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated to succeed Trump in January.  The top court is set to take up the president’s effort through an 80-minute oral argument by teleconference this week.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority including three justices appointed by the outgoing president, has promised to rule by the end of the year.  If upheld, the plan would make it difficult for the incoming administration of Biden to revisit the decision.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Trump’s effort to ‘add a citizenship question to the census, last year.
Critics now say Trump is trying to manipulate the numbers at the expense of Democratic-leaning areas with high immigrant populations.

The push could mean fewer seats for Texas, California and possibly New York and New Jersey.  There are an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States without papers.

Back in 2018, the top court has upheld the president’s restrictions on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.  The justices also allowed Trump to force asylum applicants to wait in Mexico and cleared him to use redirected Pentagon funds to build fencing along the Mexican border.

Trump also launched a crackdown on both legal and illegal entries into the country, soon after he assumed office in 2016.