Trump Pitches New Census Methodology that May Exclude Non-Documented Residents

President Trump has signaled a novel approach towards the Census 2030 count, suggesting a fresh methodology that might exclude people residing in the U.S. without valid documentation. The assertion was made through a social media announcement and raises questions as to its adherence to the 14th Amendment which necessitates all individuals in every state to be accounted for, in the critical census numbers utilized for the electoral process. It remains uncertain if President Trump intends these changes for the 2030 nationwide enumeration or an intermediate approximation. The President has requested the Commerce Department, the organ supervising the Census Bureau, to initiate the novel census, drawing insights from the 2024 Presidential Election results, although the implications of election results on the census remain elusive.

Since 1790, under the obligation of Article I of the Constitution, a ten-yearly census has been conducted, crucial in redistributing congressional seats. However, the appropriation of data from an early census for the allocation of each state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Electoral College votes presents an ambiguity. These concerns have emerged closely after President Trump’s outspoken endeavor in securing more seats for the Republican Party in the U.S. House in the forthcoming midterm elections via redistricting. This move has triggered off a nationwide political strife, with Republicans seeking to alter the congressional map in Texas, and Democrats, elsewhere, gearing up for possible countermeasures, including deliberate partisan gerrymandering.

The Census Bureau is presently engrossed in an expansive, more-than-a-decade-long preparatory process for the 2030 census. Trump’s latest spur to this end rekindles similar attempts made during his initial administration, which ignited legal disputes. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually quashed the proposal to introduce an item about an individual’s U.S. citizenship status in the 2020 census forms but did not issue any judgment on whether people without valid documentation can, unprecedentedly in U.S. history, be excluded from apportionment counts by the president.

An idea yet to be explored by the Census Bureau is the use of the census to inquire about an individual’s immigration status. Preliminary studies conducted by the Bureau suggest that incorporating the query ‘Is this person a citizen of the United States?’ into the federal government’s decade-based count is likely to yield unreliable self-reported data and dissuade households with Latino or Asian American inhabitants from participating in the official census. This could potentially distort the population figures, which are crucial for the equitable allocation of federal funding meant for public amenities across the nation.

Adding to these apprehensions, the Bureau’s research team has also cautioned that the endeavor to create block-level citizenship data through a fresh census question could inflate costs considerably. It may adversely affect the quality of other demographic data produced by the census and generate ‘considerably less accurate’ information as compared to the data available from existing government records regarding people’s citizenship status. The Supreme Court deemed the Trump administration’s initial justification for the census citizenship question — the desire to bolster the voting rights of racial minority groups — as ‘manipulative’.

Subsequently, Trump put forth an executive order delineating alternative motivations to produce more detailed citizenship data than the approximate figures currently released by the Bureau. The reasons covered a range of goals including informing immigration regulations, eligibility conditions for public benefits, and obtaining a count of individuals in the U.S. without legal documentation. It also proposed enabling state and local governments to design voting districts that do not consider children and non-U.S. citizens.

The significant shift away from prevailing re-districting norms was deemed ‘favorable to Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites’ by a Republican re-districting strategist. The legality of such a move currently remains an unresolved issue before the Supreme Court. One more aim was articulated through a presidential memorandum for the first appeal for a citizenship question — data that would make possible the groundbreaking exclusion of immigrants in the U.S. without valid legal status from congressional apportionment counts.

Trump’s plea for a new census method surfaces amid an increasing advocacy among Republican Congress members in recent years to count non-U.S. citizens residing in the country in the impending decennial census, and then excluding some or all such residents from apportionment counts. This development coincides with Trump’s executive orders aimed at curbing illegal immigration and broadening the prerequisites for proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration.

Anticipation suggests that the Trump administration’s drive to alter the census will likely be confronted with legal challenges. Moreover, if Trump’s comments pertain to the 2030 census, legal savants posit that Trump’s successor or Congress may, come 2029, have the opportunity to repeal any added question about a person’s immigration status prior to its printing on 2030 census forms.

However, the renewed push from the Trump administration to exclude U.S. residents without legal status from the census could stoke public reticence in engaging with the nation-wide count, particularly among immigrant communities and Latinos. While officials have previously emphasized that past censuses have inquired about individuals’ U.S. citizenship status in some form, the review of census records dating back to 1820 indicates a stark deviation from centuries-old precedent proposed by Trump.

The federal government has never, in its history, used the census to directly inquire about the citizenship status of every individual living in every household in the U.S. The Trump administration’s renewed push on this front marks a significant departure from established practices. The potential ripple effects of this attempt to overhaul the census methodology are likely to further stir political, legal, and social debates across the country.