The proposal seeks to exclude undocumented individuals from the population count and eliminate sensitive questions to increase participation in the Census
From the perspective of the Trump administration, excluding those who are illegally in the country would prevent a population that does not have legal authorization to reside in the United States from influencing the distribution of political representation. This approach is part of a broader government policy to strengthen immigration control and differentiate between those with permanent legal status and those who remain in the country without authorization.
The modification could particularly affect states with large immigrant populations, such as California and New York, as a reduction in the population counted for representation purposes could alter the future distribution of seats.
The proposal has already generated a political reaction. The office of New York's Democratic Attorney General, Letitia James, stated that it is evaluating possible legal actions and argued that the Constitution requires counting all persons living in the United States regardless of their immigration status. However, the Trump administration maintains that there is room to review the Census methodology and adapt it to its interpretation of usual residence and representation rules.
The project also has a direct precedent in a Trump order from August 2025, when the president instructed the Department of Commerce to develop a plan to ensure that undocumented immigrants were not included in the calculation used to determine representation. At that time, Trump also called for exploring the use of modern data, including information related to the 2024 elections.
The new proposals would not modify the additional surveys of the Census Bureau. Changes to the demographic questions would be limited to the decennial Census.
The administration of President Donald Trump is pushing for a reform of the U.S. Census that seeks to change the way the population is determined for distributing political representation among the states. The proposal includes excluding immigrants who are illegally in the country from the population count used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives and, by extension, to determine part of the representation in the Electoral College.
The Census Bureau published a regulatory proposal on Wednesday that also proposes eliminating questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation from the short questionnaire used for the decennial population count. According to the document, these questions have a ''sensitive'' nature that could discourage participation from some citizens and residents, while a simpler questionnaire could encourage a higher response rate.
One of the main proposed changes is related to the definition of ''usual residence'', a concept used to establish who is part of the population counted for political representation purposes. The administration argues that this definition has historically been linked to the permanence and establishment of a residence in the United States, as well as to a lasting authorization to reside in the country.
Under this criterion, the proposal would include legal permanent residents in the base used for seat allocation, but would exclude immigrants who are illegally in the United States. Certain foreigners whose immigration status is considered less stable or durable than that of a legal permanent resident would also be excluded.
The Census Bureau proposes to leverage the federal government's broad access to administrative records to determine the immigration status of the counted individuals. This measure would allow the use of available government information to obtain a more accurate calculation of who should be included in the population considered for distributing political representation.
The change would have significant consequences because the Census is conducted every ten years and its results determine how the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are distributed among the states. It also influences the representation in the Electoral College and the allocation of billions of dollars in federal funds.
