Who Counts? Trump Poised to Try to Remove Noncitizens From Census
20th July 2025
Following a years-long surge in illegal immigration, the President Donald Trump administration is poised to challenge a longstanding but legally fraught practice: counting illegal aliens in the U.S. census.
Trump tried to end the practice during his first term, but President Joe Biden overturned his predecessor’s policy before it was implemented. Now, buoyed by red state attorneys general and Republican legislators, the second Trump administration is determined “to clean up the census and make sure that illegal aliens are not counted,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said last month.
What Miller didn’t mention are the political implications of the administration’s move. It could have significant political implications because the census count is used to apportion House seats, determine the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College for selecting the president, and drive the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds.