A sign encouraging people to participate in the U.S. Census is placed on a sidewalk in Somerville, Massachusetts, on August 4, 2020.
brian snyder reuter
Congressional Democrats and civil rights groups are concerned about the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the U.S. Census that would exclude noncitizens without permanent resident status, potentially changing how Congress is represented and how federal funds are distributed.
Opponents warn that the rule, promulgated in September, could have a negative impact, shifting congressional power to areas with fewer immigrants and potentially underfunding education, health care, food assistance and emergency management programs. The public can comment on the rules until November 2, the day before Election Day.
“Most likely, this will end up in litigation,” said Meeta Anand, senior director of census and data equity at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “I know that excluding non-citizens from the count is a government project, so I don’t think everything will get better.”
The proposed census changes are the latest move by the Trump administration to reduce illegal immigration. If certain categories of immigrants living in the United States are not counted, areas with high concentrations of immigrants may receive less federal funding. Supporters of the rule argue that counting all immigrants legally living in the United States encourages illegal immigration.
The rule would exclude millions of noncitizens without green cards from the census, including people in the country on student visas, people in temporary protected status, refugees and asylum seekers. It would also prohibit collecting demographic information about race and ethnicity from short-form census questionnaires. That information can be used for civil rights enforcement and to assess compliance with federal laws prohibiting racial discrimination.
When asked for comment on the proposed rule, the White House referred CNBC to the Department of Commerce, which oversees the census. The Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Critics argue that the proposal violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, in part, that “the Representatives shall be numbered in each State, and shall be apportioned to the several States according to their number.”
After the rule was announced last month, Sen. Andy Kim (D.N.J.) said in a statement, “This rule is yet another attack on democracy by Donald Trump.” “Accurate census counts are at the very foundation of ensuring equal representation across our country and directing federal funds to where they are needed most. The census is enshrined in the Constitution and not subject to political debate.”
The Census has counted noncitizens since the founding of the United States.
Supporters, including some Republicans, of the bill to eliminate counting of noncitizens argue that the census practice of counting all U.S. residents dating back to the country’s founding encourages illegal immigration and gives some voters more power than others.
“Republicans have been warning that Democrats’ deliberate trespassing and sanctuary policies are rooted in a desire to increase the power of blue states,” Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde said in a statement in September, announcing a bill that would exclude noncitizens and add a citizenship question to the 2030 census, while calling for a reapportionment of seats before the 2028 election. The proposal has 42 Republican co-sponsors.
Seats are typically redistributed every 10 years using new census data.
“With high stakes and close margins, Congress must act to ensure that by the 2028 election, only the American people can decide how Congressional maps are drawn and who lives in the White House,” Clyde added.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) introduced a similar bill last year that would require the Census Bureau to include a citizenship status question in future censuses, arguing that noncitizens would greatly skew Congressional maps.
“As people continue to flee Democratic-run cities, desperate Democrats are backfilling the exodus with illegal immigrants to ensure they don’t lose Congressional seats or electoral votes, thereby artificially increasing their own political power and, in turn, weakening the power of other Americans’ votes,” Hagerty said in a statement.
The next US Census is in 2030
While the census changes are not final, the changes the administration has implemented will be difficult to reverse by the 2030 census.
“The Census Bureau is considering how best to distinguish between aliens in the United States who are counted for purposes of apportionment,” the administration said in its proposal, suggesting it would use administrative records to confirm the legal status of counted aliens. The proposal also states that the Census Bureau could add immigration status questions to the short-form census questionnaire.
Anand said the first has the effect of suppressing response rates and is likely to lead to inaccurate counts. The second case can lead to mistakes and unfair discounts for domestic people with legal status.
A New York Times analysis of the proposal found that it would result in the loss of House seats in several states, including areas that generally favor Republicans. The paper said Florida, Rhode Island and Texas could all lose seats, while Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon could each add delegates to their caucuses.
But beyond apportioning seats in Congress, the rule could cut funding to federal programs that serve low-income people, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Head Start, said Julie Morita, president and CEO of the Joyce Foundation, a nonpartisan philanthropy that supports racial equity and economic mobility in the Great Lakes region. She noted that the scale of these programs reaches “trillions of dollars.”
“Inaccurate counts risk 10-year consequences,” Rep. Grace Meng (D.N.Y.) said in a statement in September. “Census data helps determine the allocation of federal resources for Congress, district representation, health care, education, infrastructure, and other critical services.”
President Trump has tried to eliminate non-citizens before.
Toward the end of his first term, President Trump tried to remove illegal immigrants from Congress’ apportionment, but the change was never implemented. In August 2025, President Trump announced in a post on TruthSocial that he was directing the Department of Commerce to “begin work on a new and more accurate census.”
“People who are in our country illegally will not be counted in the census,” President Trump posted.
The Department of Commerce has the authority to count, but any changes to the subjects or types of information counted must be submitted to Congress at least three years before the next census date (the deadline is April 1, 2027). The department is also required to report the questions included in the census to Congress at least two years in advance of the census date.
Congress has the power to overturn changes proposed by the bill. But Democrats are unlikely to overturn the Trump administration unless they win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
If a Democratic president wins the 2028 election, he could introduce new rules that would reverse President Trump’s exclusion of certain immigrants, but the rule-making process is long and complicated, and there is little time available.
“Planning for a census takes a lot of time, effort, research, operational changes, computer programming, and code development,” Anand said.
