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TRUMP’S CENSUS OVERHAUL WOULD EXCLUDE SOME IMMIGRANTS AND REMOVE
QUESTIONS ON RACE  
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Zolan Kanno-Youngs
September 9, 2026
The New York Times
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_ The proposals for 2030 are among significant changes that would
upend a process for helping allot congressional seats and shape
policies that address disparities. _

A naturalization ceremony at Ellis Island in 2022. The Trump
administration has proposed new census regulations that would no
longer ask Americans about race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, and
would exclude noncitizens without green cards, Jeenah Moon for The New
York Times

 

The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed to no longer count
immigrants without green cards in the 2030 census or ask about race
and ethnicity, part of an overhaul that would redefine who counts as a
U.S. resident in the eyes of the federal government.

The sweeping measures would upend a process that helps determine the
allotment of congressional seats, billions of dollars in federal
funding and policies to address systemic disparities.

The proposed regulation
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published online on Wednesday, would not count noncitizens without
green cards in the 2030 census, a significant departure from the
process stipulated by the Constitution to occur every 10 years.
Historically, the census has asked Americans about their race and
ethnicity and counted all U.S. residents regardless of their
immigration status.

The overhaul also would bar the U.S. census from asking Americans
about their sexual orientation.

While the proposal is likely to face legal challenges, the changes
would not only remove undocumented immigrants from the official
population count used to determine congressional seats, but also
immigrants who are in the United States legally and have yet to secure
green cards or citizenship. As a result, areas with more immigrants,
which tend to vote Democratic, could lose representation and federal
funding.

The proposed overhaul, as well as removing questions about race,
ethnicity and sexual orientation from the census, could have major
implications for collecting the federal data used to inform
anti-discrimination policies and civil rights protections.

“If we don’t have the data in order to see that there’s
problems, then we’re sticking our heads in the sand,” said Kimball
W. Brace, the president of Election Data Services, an organization
working with Democratic and Republican local governments on census and
election issues. “We won’t see it. We won’t get a feel for
what’s happened.”

An overhaul of the census count would face significant hurdles. The
14th Amendment calls for “counting the whole number of persons in
each state,” rather than just citizens. And the rule would affect a
census count after the 2028 presidential election, so a new
administration could try to reverse the changes. Under the U.S.
Constitution, Congress is tasked with carrying out the census;
however, it has delegated decisions on the census to the Commerce
Department.

But some researchers said Mr. Trump’s decision to try to resurrect
his first-term effort
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to reshape the census could create a chilling effect and reduce
participation.

As part of the proposal released on Wednesday, the administration said
it was considering including a question in the census about the
immigration status of participants, something civil rights groups have
warned would deter immigrants with and without legal status from
filling out the form out of fear of government retaliation.

“The Trump administration is trying to omit pieces of the population
that they don’t feel are real Americans,” said William H. Frey, a
demographer at the Brookings Institution. “And in many ways, pulling
back some of the trends and important policies that came into effect
since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick speaking at the White House in June.
Mr. Lutnick signed the proposal posted by administration officials on
Wednesday.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times

The White House referred questions to the Commerce Department, which
did not respond to requests for comment.

In the proposed rule posted on Wednesday, signed by Mr. Trump’s
commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, the administration said it was
reassessing how it collects race and ethnicity data after
“substantial doubts about the meaning, significance, and impact of
attempting to categorize persons by race and ethnicity” surfaced in
the national conversation.

The proposal also cited Mr. Trump’s executive order that purged the
federal government
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of efforts centered on diversity, equity and inclusion.

The release of the regulation came after Mr. Trump last year ordered
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the Commerce Department to exclude undocumented immigrants from the
census. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED
IN THE CENSUS,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on social media in the
summer of 2025.

The proposal on Wednesday, however, went further by trying to exclude
those immigrants with legal status who lack a green card.

The administration argued in the proposed rule that undocumented
immigrants are not “true inhabitants” of the United States because
of “their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance” to the country.
And while some immigrants without green cards have legal status, the
administration said in the proposal that such status is “less
durable and indefinite in length.”

Mr. Trump began a similar effort in his first term when he sought to
add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The effort ultimately
failed
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A federal court rejected the attempt
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and the Supreme Court declined to intervene
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Career officials in the Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce
Department, also stood up
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to the administration’s attempts to exert pressure on their work.

Attorney General Letitia James of New York said on social media on
Wednesday that her office was exploring legal options to challenge Mr.
Trump’s proposed changes.

“The Constitution is clear,” Ms. James said. “Every person
living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be
counted in the census.”

_ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS_ [[link removed]]_
is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump
and his administration._

* census
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* Donald Trump
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* Immigrants
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* race
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