I wish I had been involved. More than likely I would have told the woman to get lost. A friend of mine, who is a staunch union Democrat who believes he has "rights", got an ACS survey form.
He knows that I worked Census, so he called me for advice [he did NOT like the detailed financial information requested].
He wanted to just tell them that he wasn't giving them the information, and to get lost, standing on his "rights".
I told him that his only hope was to not engage them at all.
Don't answer the door, don't answer their phone calls, if they tackle you in the yard, tell them you don't live there and are just looking after the place for a friend. Lie convincingly.
He didn't want to do that.
"Once you engage them, you are lost."
He still thought he had the "right" to tell them to get lost.
When I worked for the Census Bureau decades ago we were given specific instructions for the ACS survey.
The “visit” list was only people who had not responded to the mailed survey.
Probably 90%+ were friendly and cooperative.
Another 5% refused to cooperate.
Another 5% tried to avoid us in various ways.
The way we handled the last two groups was that we contacted neighbors and asked them basic questions that neighbors would be likely to know (not about income, though).
So—if you don’t want to answer the questions you can refuse and the census taker should be ok with that. If they give you a hard time just ask for the phone number of their supervisor and tell them you plan to complain about harassment.