Trump Administration Proposes Sweeping Census Overhaul

The Trump administration has unveiled a far-reaching proposal to reshape the once-a-decade United States Census, a move that could exclude millions of immigrants and strip out key racial and ethnic data from the national head count.

Announced on Wednesday, the plan would bar undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers and anyone without permanent legal status from being counted. It would also remove certain demographic questions from the traditional questionnaire, including those on race and on LGBTQ+ identity.

The proposal echoes an earlier attempt by President Donald Trump to add a citizenship question to the 2030 census. In a notice posted on the Federal Register website, the U.S. Census Bureau argued that "illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count, as they are not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a 'usual residence' in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States."

The bureau further stated that the census "should be colorblind and should not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics, such as race."

Census figures are used to determine how many seats each state holds in the House of Representatives through the apportionment count, which in turn decides the number of votes a state has in the Electoral College.

Beth Jarosz, a data researcher and vice president of the Association of Public Data Users, described the proposals as "unprecedented" and warned they would degrade the quality of census data.

"Not counting all of the people who reside here is actually where the real threat is," Jarosz said, pointing to the many uses of census data. "You can imagine if we have undercounts or if we have people counted in the wrong place. Then their political power or their political representation gets diluted."

She noted that the decennial census has historically not attempted a full count of residents by citizenship status, though the question can appear in the bureau's periodic American Community Survey.

Accurate counts of immigrants, regardless of status, are also important for allocating resources during public health emergencies or natural and man-made disasters, Jarosz added. "If you don't have a count of everyone who's there, you're not going to have the resources you need," she said. "And that puts everybody at risk."

Race-related questions have featured in the census since 1790. Since 2000, respondents have been allowed to identify with more than one race. A 2015 Pew Research Center study found that multiracial people in the U.S. were growing at three times the rate of the general population, and by 2020, 33.8 million people identified as being of more than one race.

Such data is essential for researchers tracking discrimination, crime rates and wealth gaps in communities of color. Jarosz said collecting 2030 census data with these elements missing would be harmful.

"These changes are like trying to land an airplane when you are in thick fog and someone has thrown paint across the front window and your instruments are also not working," she said.