President Donald Trump announced Thursday on Truth Social that he has ordered the Department of Commerce to begin work on a new census that will not count illegal aliens. This move could have major implications in future election cycles, as the census is used to determine each state’s number of U.S. House seats and electoral votes.
“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern-day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
There are approximately 18.6 million illegal aliens currently in the United States, according to a recent report from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Many reside in deep blue states that have heavily gerrymandered U.S. House districts – meaning that Democrats have an electoral incentive to pack as many noncitizens into their state as possible. California and New York have a total of about 4.25 million illegal aliens. The average House seat represents about 761,000 people.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller stated in an interview with Fox News that 20 to 30 seats in the House belong to Democrats due to a combination of illegal aliens being counted in the census and gerrymandering.
“Let’s not forget. Democrats rigged the 2020 census by including illegal aliens,” Miller said. “Remember, they sued Donald Trump. They sued the administration. They fought tooth and nail to include illegal aliens in the census – 20 to 30 of House Democrat seats wouldn’t exist but for illegal aliens.”
As Miller alluded to, Trump attempted to exclude illegal aliens from the count during his first term, leading up to the 2020 census. On July 21, 2020, Trump signed a memorandum to “exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status under the Immigration and Nationality Act” for the House of Representatives.
Twenty-three states and groups that support illegal aliens sued the Trump administration to stop the memorandum. A federal court sided with the plaintiffs, and the Supreme Court declined to intervene, saying at the time that doing so was premature. As a result, the 2020 census count included illegal aliens.
Upon taking office, Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking Trump’s memorandum and officially killing the effort to remove illegal aliens from the census count.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk explained in a post on Thursday on X that Trump’s current plan to exclude illegal aliens could lead to an early census, as the U.S. Constitution does not put a limit on how often the federal government can issue one.
“Properly counting the U.S. population would result in a delta of 15-20 more seats for Republicans,” Kirk said. “Article I of the Constitution says that the Census must be done ‘within’ every 10-year period. There is no prohibition on performing more. Redo the botched 2020 Covid Census.”
Alan Jamison is the pen name of a political writer with extensive experience writing for several notable politicians and news outlets.
