Following a years-long surge in illegal immigration, the Trump administration is poised to challenge a longstanding but legally fraught practice: counting illegal aliens in the U.S. census.
President Trump tried to end the practice during his first term, but President 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.
Some immigration researchers project that including noncitizens in the census count disproportionately benefits Democratic states with large illegal alien populations.
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