President Donald Trump said on Thursday morning that illegal immigrants will not be included in the next census, adding that he has ordered the Commerce Department to begin working on a “new and highly accurate census that is based on results from the 2024 presidential election.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which falls under the Commerce Department, the first major field test for the 2030 census is set to take place in 2026, with another coming in 2028.
“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 on Truth Social. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”
The Census Bureau also says that illegal immigrants, whom it refers to as “unauthorized migrants,” are included in censuses and surveys and added into “the total foreign-born population.”
“The U.S. Census Bureau uses the term foreign born to refer to anyone who is not a U.S. citizen at birth. This includes naturalized U.S. citizens, non-citizen U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents (immigrants), temporary migrants (such as foreign students), humanitarian migrants (such as refugees and asylees), and unauthorized migrants,” the bureau says.
Trump’s directive to remove illegal immigrants from the census could run into legal challenges. Section 2 of the 14th Amendment states, “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.”
Trump is placing his focus on the census as Republicans and Democrats fight over redistricting in Texas ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Republicans are also seeking to prevent census errors from benefiting Democrat-led states in future elections, an issue from the 2020 census that the Census Bureau acknowledged in 2022.
Following the 2020 census, the government said that multiple red states, including Florida and Texas, were incorrectly undercounted, which led to them not receiving as many seats in Congress — which also determines electoral college votes — as they should have. Most of the overcounted states in the census were Democrat-led, including New York, Massachusetts, and Minnesota.
If the federal government follows through on Trump’s pledge to stop counting illegal immigrants in the census, a handful of states — both red and blue — could see their population numbers fall in 2030. According to a Pew Research survey from last year, three states have illegal immigrant populations of more than one million: California (1.8 million), Texas (1.6 million), and Florida (1.2 million). As of 2024, New York had an illegal immigrant population of 650,000, New Jersey had 475,000, and Illinois had 400,000.