On August 7, 2025, President Donald Trump delivered an announcement that sent shockwaves through the American political landscape: he had instructed the Department of Commerce to begin work on a new census that would exclude undocumented immigrants from the population count. The move, revealed in a post on Truth Social, comes as both parties gear up for a high-stakes battle over congressional redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately start work on a new and highly accurate census, based on modern facts and figures, and using the results and information from the 2024 presidential election,” Trump wrote, as reported by CNN and other outlets. He added pointedly, “People in our country illegally will not be counted in the census.”
The announcement immediately reignited fierce debate over how America counts its people and how those numbers shape political power. The U.S. Constitution mandates a national census every ten years to determine representation in Congress, specifying in the 14th Amendment that the census must count “the whole number of persons in each state.” For more than a century, courts have interpreted this language to mean everyone residing in the country, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.
Yet, Trump’s push for a new census—potentially a rare mid-decade count—seeks to upend that tradition. According to Newsweek, the president argues that including undocumented immigrants is “unconstitutional,” despite repeated court rulings to the contrary. Estimates of the undocumented population range widely, from about 11 million (per Biden administration figures in 2022) to as high as 20 million, according to some conservative groups. The latest U.S. Census Bureau estimate puts the total U.S. population at nearly 335 million, with foreign-born residents making up 14.3 percent.
Why does this matter so much? Congressional representation is a zero-sum game: if one state gains a seat, another loses one. Ira Mehlman, media director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told Newsweek, “When one state gains a seat in Congress due to the presence of illegal aliens, American citizens in another state necessarily lose representation.” FAIR estimates that California’s large undocumented population may have given it four to five extra representatives. “The system actually rewards states that enact policies that draw illegal aliens,” Mehlman added.
Trump’s announcement comes at a time when the White House is encouraging Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps early—a process known as redistricting, which usually happens every ten years after the census. The timing is no accident. Redistricting can dramatically alter the balance of power in Congress and state legislatures. The last census, conducted in 2020, led to population undercounts in many red states like Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas, while blue states such as Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island saw overcounts. These discrepancies affected which states gained or lost seats in the House of Representatives: Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, and Texas gained seats, while California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia lost them.
Both parties now see an opportunity to revisit the maps about five years early, as reported by The New York Post. At Trump’s urging, Texas Republicans recently took steps to reconfigure the state’s congressional map in hopes of squeezing out as many as five more GOP seats for 2026. Texas Democrats blocked the effort for now by leaving the state during a special legislative session, but the battle is far from over. Blue-state officials in places like California and New York have threatened to overhaul their own maps in response, even though California’s constitution specifically bans mid-decade redistricting.
Republicans are also floating similar changes in other red states, such as Missouri and Indiana. Vice President JD Vance visited Indiana on the same day as Trump’s announcement, underscoring the GOP’s determination to hold onto its slim House majority. The stakes are high: since 1938, the party controlling the White House has lost seats in all but two midterm elections (1998 and 2002), and Trump is eager to avoid a repeat that could cost him control of Congress and unleash a wave of investigations during his final years in office.
But can a president unilaterally order a new census for reapportionment? Constitutional experts say no. According to CNN and Newsweek, such a move would almost certainly face immediate legal challenges. Past attempts at inter-decennial headcounts were authorized by Congress, not by presidential order. The last serious effort for a mid-decade census was in the 1970s, and it was ultimately dropped. During his first term, Trump tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, but the Supreme Court blocked the move, and the Commerce Department abandoned the idea after legal setbacks.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, was blunt in his assessment to Newsweek: “The plan is blatantly unconstitutional. There is not even the slightest ambiguity here. He is effectively setting aside the Constitution based on a partisan conspiracy theory.”
Gil Guerra, an immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, echoed the skepticism, telling Newsweek, “It seems to me that the plan will likely get mired in legal challenges. The most likely outcome is protracted litigation that could drag past the 2026 midterms, making the exercise moot for redistricting purposes. Moreover, this could backfire if the resulting undercount affects red states with growing immigrant populations like Texas and Florida.”
Still, conservative and anti-immigration groups argue that the inclusion of undocumented immigrants in the census has significant consequences for both apportionment and national elections. “Each state's electoral vote count is based on the number of seats it holds in the House. Thus, the current system of counting illegal aliens for congressional apportionment could determine the outcome of a close presidential election,” Mehlman of FAIR said.
Yet, not all experts agree on the practical impact. Bier of the Cato Institute noted that making such a change would likely have “very little partisan effect on net.” The U.S. Census Bureau itself has already begun planning for the 2030 census, stating it is working on an “initial, high-level design,” but implementing the kind of overhaul Trump envisions would require a constitutional amendment—a tall order in today’s polarized political climate.
Trump’s push to alter the census is just the latest in a series of moves aimed at reshaping the machinery of government to benefit his party. Just days before his census announcement, he dismissed Erika McEntarfer, the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accusing her of manipulating jobs data for political purposes—a charge that has further fueled partisan tensions in Washington.
As the nation barrels toward another bruising midterm election cycle, the census controversy is sure to remain front and center. With legal battles looming and both parties maneuvering for advantage, the fight over who gets counted—and who gets a voice in Congress—may prove to be one of the defining political dramas of the coming years.
For now, the question of whether undocumented immigrants will be counted in America’s next census remains unresolved, but the stakes for democracy, representation, and the nation’s political future could hardly be higher.
