Americans are well aware of the issues that stem from allowing large numbers of illegal aliens into the United States, from cheap foreign labor to abuse of welfare systems and legitimate concerns about illegal voting. But there is another glaring issue that illegal immigration causes, and President Donald Trump and his administration are proposing a way to fix it before 2030.
Illegal aliens are currently counted in the United States Census — the census count that is used to form a population baseline for each state and allocate U.S. House seats and Electoral College power among the 50 states every ten years.
When the United States was founded, and until open borders policies allowed millions of illegal immigrants across the U.S. border, illegal immigrants added only marginally to the U.S. population.
However, that is no longer the case. Thanks to Democrats’ open borders policies, congressional power is being shifted from states with stable or shrinking native-born populations to states with vast immigrant populations — both legal and illegal.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) estimates that seventeen U.S. House seats were reallocated between the 2010 and 2020 census due to immigration. CIS also found that roughly 10 million illegal immigrants responded to the 2020 census and about 20 million non-citizens (including permanent residents, foreign students, and green card holders) responded to the 2020 census.
The solution the U.S. Census Bureau is working to adopt under President Trump is a simple one: eliminate non-citizens from being counted in the 2030 U.S. Census and beyond, ensuring that only citizens are counted in the reapportionment process.
On September 10, the U.S. Census Bureau under President Trump proposed a new rule that would remove non-citizens (including foreign residents and foreign students as well as illegal aliens) from the total number of citizens counted for the purposes of apportionment. After the comment period, which runs through Nov. 2, the Census Bureau is expected to issue a final rule, but as one might expect, liberal activist groups are gearing up to fight the rule once it is finalized.
The Center for Immigration Studies released an episode in October 2024 examining how immigration affects the distribution of political power. CIS re-released the episode, which features Executive Director Mark Krikorian and Director of Research Steven Camarota, with an update on Sept. 17, 2026.
Camarota speaks in the episode about the impact of illegal aliens being included in the census, regardless of whether they vote. “Seats are apportioned, that is distributed to the states, based solely on total population, not citizens, not adults, not people of voting age or anything like that. It’s just population totals,” Camarota explains.
Camarota also explains the impact of including illegal immigrants in the census on the Electoral College issue: “One other place it has an impact, obviously, is in the Electoral College, because the Electoral College is based on the size of your congressional delegation as well. So the inclusion of immigrants, bottom line, is going to have an impact on seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and votes in the Electoral College.”
The states that gained seats and therefore Congressional power due to an increasing number of immigrants being counted in the 2020 Census compared to the 2010 Census were predominantly blue states such as California, New York, and New Jersey according to CIS. Texas and Florida, which lean Republican, also gained due to immigration.
Unsurprisingly, the states that lost representation between the 2010 census and 2020 census were large states in the Midwest with large populations of U.S.-born citizens. “It’s often battleground states in the Midwest — a state like Wisconsin, a state like Michigan — in our various simulations often lose one or two. But Ohio, because it’s big, and because it has few immigrants, is really a state that tends to lose the most,” Camarota states.
This data is evidence of just how large an impact immigration has on the U.S. distribution of power, and as that population grows, the power shifts will continue.
Illegal immigrants, according to Camarota, have a smaller individual impact because there are fewer of them and not all of them fill out the Census, but the number is far from zero.
As states gain counts of immigrants, U.S. House seats are redistributed from states with stable or shrinking natural-born populations, such as many Midwest states, and shuffled to states with growing populations — regardless of whether those populations are growing due to legal or illegal immigrants.
CIS states that seventeen U.S. House seats were reallocated to new states in the 2020 Census due to the impact of new immigrants compared to the 2010 Census. At least two House seats were reallocated due to the impact of illegal immigrants according to CIS. In other words, the number of illegal immigrants in two states tipped those states’ populations over the edge compared to the 2010 Census and snatched two U.S. House seats from other states.
This is the impact that illegal immigrant populations have on Congressional power, regardless of whether illegal immigrants vote — which is a separate and similarly troubling issue.
President Donald Trump has been adamant about removing non-citizens from the count in the next U.S. Census in 2030 because of the way that illegal populations can distort Congressional power and reroute federal resources to states and congressional districts with large populations of non-citizens.
Democrats and left-leaning groups are gearing up to fight the proposed changes to the U.S. Census by arguing that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution calls for apportionment based on the whole number of persons in each state, which presumably includes non-citizens.
However, President Trump is determined to remove non-citizens from the 2030 Census and depending on whether the issue reaches the Supreme Court, the Trump Administration may be able to enact the change. The Commerce Department is allowed to make changes to the census but must present them to Congress at least three years before next census, or by April 2027 to make changes to the 2030 Census.
If a Supreme Court ruling rejects adding a citizenship question to the census in order to modify apportionment, illegal immigrants will continue to be counted. However, a favorable ruling could ensure the 2030 census asks individuals to specify if they are citizens and counts only citizens for apportionment.
In 2019, the Supreme Court rejected adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census by a narrow 5–4 decision. The Court left the door open to adding a citizenship question, however. The Court determined the government has the right to ask a citizenship question, but that it needs to properly justify changing the long-standing practice.
It is far from surprising that the proposal has received pushback from leftists, but the argument leftists are making exposes the issue at the center of President Trump’s determination to remove illegal aliens from the census count. Democrats argue that states with large non-citizen populations will be stripped of federal resources. Apparently, it escapes leftist critics that federal resources — like Congressional power and federal taxpayer dollars — were never meant to be distributed among a large population of illegal immigrants in the first place. By admitting the proposed change will disrupt and modify federal resource allocation and political power, leftists are admitting that the current counting of illegal immigrants siphons resources and power away from U.S. citizens.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
