The National Intertest

Administration wants census to exclude millions of illegals

By Amy B Wang The Washington Post

Published Sept. 10, 2026

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Millions of residents could be excluded from the U.S. census, congressional representation could be reshaped and federal funds could be reallocated across states under changes proposed by the Trump administration.

In the proposal posted to the federal register Wednesday, the Census Bureau suggested adding a citizenship question to the decennial questionnaire, which President Donald Trump has wanted since his first term.

The proposal argues that the census count should exclude any undocumented immigrants and noncitizens without permanent residency because they are "not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a 'usual residence' in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States."

Under the newly proposed rules, refugees and asylum seekers would be excluded from the population count.

Trump administration officials also want to prohibit the Census Bureau from asking certain demographic questions, including about race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, claiming the survey "should be colorblind and should not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics."

The Census has collected data on race and ethnicity since 1790.

Trump has for years pushed to alter how the American population is tallied every decade, including unsuccessful efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. The Supreme Court ultimately froze that plan, saying Trump officials had provided a "contrived" reason for wanting such information.

Trump later said the citizenship question was needed to affect the redistricting process, an argument the Justice Department did not use in its legal defense. Census results every 10 years determine how the House's 435 seats are allocated among states.

"Number one, you need it for Congress — you need it for Congress for districting," Trump said in 2019. "You need it for appropriations — where are the funds going? How many people are there? Are they citizens? Are they not citizens? You need it for many reasons."

Last August, Trump announced he was directing the Department of Commerce to again overhaul the census, amid a nationwide redistricting battle.

"People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS," he wrote on Truth Social then.

The Trump administration's latest proposal will almost certainly face legal challenges. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution mandates that representatives in Congress be apportioned to states based on "the whole number of persons in each state," without specifying citizenship or immigration status.

Currently, the U.S. Census counts native — born U.S. citizens, naturalized U.S. citizens, non — citizen U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents and temporary migrants, such as foreign students, refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led a lawsuit against Trump's efforts to change the 2020 Census, said Wednesday the state is again exploring legal options to fight back against the administration's proposed changes to the 2030 Census.

"The Constitution is clear. Every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted in the census," she wrote on X.

Civil rights and public health groups have also warned against the removal of questions about race and ethnicity from the Census, saying doing so would hamper officials' ability to address health disparities, starting with how to appropriately allocate federal funding.

"If you change what the census counts, then you change where the money can help most," Vi D. Le and Melanie Klein of the Federation of American Scientists wrote last week.

"Removing race and ethnicity data does not make health disparities go away," they wrote. "It merely makes them harder to find, harder to measure, and harder to fix."

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