President Donald Trump’s administration has announced a proposal to remove millions of non-Americans from census data.
Analysts say plans to exclude noncitizens and people who are not permanent residents from the next complete census in 2030 could have a dramatic impact on federal aid and political representation.
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The proposal comes amid a broader immigration crackdown by the Trump administration and efforts to reshape electoral power through measures such as congressional redistricting and restrictions on mail-in voting, which activists say could disenfranchise minorities.
Here’s what we know about the census proposal and its potential political impact.
What is a proposal?
A memo released Wednesday by the Commerce Department proposes that only U.S. citizens and permanent residents be counted in the census.
This would also exclude illegal aliens and legal temporary residents who do not have green cards, which are issued to permanent residents.
The department justified the proposal by saying that illegal immigrants and other aliens without permanent legal status are not “true residents” and lack sufficient “bonds and allegiance” to the United States.
The proposal also proposes removing some questions about race and ethnicity, which have been part of the survey since 1790, as well as questions about sexual orientation.
The proposal will have a 30-day public comment period, and the Department of Commerce will consider feedback before setting new policy.
President Trump has long called for changes to census policies, writing last year on his Truth Social platform that “people in our country illegally will not be counted.”
According to the U.S. Constitution, Congress has final say over the census.
How many people will be excluded after the census changes?
Millions.
Pew Research Center estimated that there were 14 million illegal immigrants in the United States in 2023, the last year for which data is presented. It is estimated that there are at least 2 million legal immigrants in the United States who are not permanent residents, and the proposed changes would also exclude them.
According to Pew, in 2023 more than half of all illegal immigrants in the United States will be concentrated in just six states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.
California had the highest number of deaths, with an estimated 2.3 million, followed by Texas with 2.1 million.
What impact could it have on federal resources?
The Census Bureau says its data informs the direction of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding annually, including money allocated to schools, hospitals and public infrastructure.
Advocacy groups argue that excluding undocumented and legal temporary immigrants from the count skews the data and could lead to a lack of funding for cities and states with large immigrant populations.
Meeta Anand, senior director of the Census and Data Equity Program at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told Reuters the impact could be “stunning.”
Census data “underpins much of our democracy and society,” Anand said. “So we start to see a very inaccurate picture of our country, and then we end up making political decisions, business decisions, investment decisions based on flawed data.”
What does that mean for political representation?
Representatives in Congress and the Electoral College may also change.
The United States uses census data to determine how many seats are allocated to each state in the House of Representatives and how to draw electoral districts to ensure approximately equal representation across the country.
As a result, areas with large populations of illegal immigrants may lose representation. Additionally, a state that loses a House seat could lose the Electoral College vote that determines the presidency.
What was the reaction?
Critics say the Trump administration’s census proposal ignores the 14th Amendment, which says political representation should be based on “the total number of states.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office is considering ways to legally challenge the census plan. “The Constitution is clear: everyone living in the United States must be counted in the census, regardless of immigration status,” she posted on X.
The Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy organization, called the proposal “a flagrant attack on our democracy aimed at manipulating voting results and weakening the political representation of a diverse American society.”
He called on Americans to petition their representatives to oppose the policy, which will not go into effect until after President Trump leaves office.
