The Trump administration formally proposed a rule Wednesday that would exclude undocumented immigrants and noncitizens without green cards from the census count used to divvy up congressional seats among the states, a move that would fundamentally reshape the House of Representatives and the Electoral College.
The proposal, published in the Federal Register, would apply to the apportionment count following the 2030 census, according to The Daily Wire, which first reported the plan. It marks the most concrete step yet in a years-long push by President Donald Trump to remove people living in the country illegally from the population tally that determines political power.
Under the proposed regulation, only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents would be included in the apportionment base. Immigrants without legal status and noncitizens who lack green cards would be left out. The change would have sweeping consequences for states with large undocumented populations, several of which are currently represented by Democrats in Congress.
Legal Showdown Looms
The proposal is all but certain to face immediate legal challenges. The 14th Amendment states that “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” That language has long been interpreted to require counting all residents, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.
New York Attorney General Letitia James signaled Wednesday that her office is already preparing a response. In a post on X, James wrote that the Constitution is clear and that every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted in the census. She said her office was “exploring” legal options to stop the administration’s plan.
James is no stranger to suing the Trump administration over census-related matters. During Trump’s first term, she was part of a coalition of state attorneys general that successfully blocked an attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. That fight went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2019 that the administration’s stated rationale was insufficient. The new proposal is likely to follow a similar path through the courts.
Trump’s Long-Standing Push
Trump has publicly floated the idea of excluding undocumented immigrants from the census for years. In an August 2025 post on Truth Social, he wrote that he had instructed the Department of Commerce to begin work on what he called a new and highly accurate census based on modern-day facts and figures, and importantly, using the results and information gained from the 2024 presidential election.
“People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS,” Trump wrote at the time.
The Census Bureau currently counts “unauthorized migrants” as part of the broader foreign-born population, a category that also includes naturalized U.S. citizens, non-citizen U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents, temporary migrants such as foreign students, humanitarian migrants including refugees and asylees, and unauthorized migrants. The administration’s proposal would draw a sharp line between those groups for apportionment purposes.
Which States Stand to Lose
The practical impact would fall heaviest on states with the largest undocumented populations. According to a Pew Research study based on 2023 data, California has roughly 2.3 million undocumented immigrants, followed by Texas with 2.1 million, Florida with 1.6 million, New York with 825,000, New Jersey with 600,000, and Illinois with 550,000.
If those residents were excluded from the apportionment count, those states could lose congressional seats and, with them, votes in the Electoral College. California and New York are reliably Democratic, while Texas and Florida are Republican strongholds. But the effects would ripple through state legislatures as well, since many states use the same census data to draw their own district maps.
Legal experts have noted that even a successful rulemaking would not take effect until after the 2030 census, leaving years of litigation ahead. The Census Bureau is currently in the planning stages for that count, which will be the first since Trump’s second term began.
Other Changes in the Proposal
The proposed rule also includes provisions to remove questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation from the census. The regulation cites a reduced need for or usefulness of this information as the rationale for dropping those questions — a move that could complicate enforcement of civil rights laws that rely on census data to detect discrimination.
It remains unclear whether the administration intends to finalize the rule before the end of Trump’s term or whether it is laying the groundwork for a longer legal battle. The Federal Register notice opens a public comment period, after which the administration could move to make the rule final.
For now, the proposal signals that the administration is prepared to fight in court over the meaning of the 14th Amendment’s apportionment clause — a fight that could ultimately determine how political power is distributed across the country for a decade.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-admin-moves-to-take-illegal-immigrants-off-the-census