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, 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 take effect only after the 2028 presidential election, meaning a new administration could come in and 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 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.”
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 of efforts centered on diversity, equity and inclusion.
The release of the regulation came after Mr. Trump last year ordered 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.
A federal court rejected the attempt, and the Supreme Court declined to intervene. Career officials in the Census Bureau, which is part of the Commerce Department, also stood up 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.”
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