Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that a census be conducted every 10 years, but President Trump has called for an unprecedented mid-decade census after expressing his disdain over the inclusion of illegal aliens in the 2020 count.
With the 2026 midterms a year away, the president is concerned that Americans in some states have unfairly lost representation, federal dollars, and Electoral College clout to illegal aliens in other states.
But Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), thinks it is highly unlikely that President Trump's call for a reapportionment will come to fruition.
He believes Trump is trying to trigger a national debate about this issue.
"What he is trying to do here, I think, is influence the 2030 Census, which will be coming up sooner than we all expect," Mehlman tells AFN. "Before the 2020 Census … he wanted to exclude illegal aliens not from being counted, but from being counted for the purposes of reapportionment."
Because the courts dragged their feet, Trump could not get it done at that time, so he is aiming to influence 2030.
"As Vice President Vance has pointed out, California probably has four or five extra seats in the House of Representatives, owing to their very large illegal alien population," notes Mehlman. "This does need to be looked at. Representation should be afforded to American citizens – not to people who are in the country illegally – and this is clearly an effort to try to change that in the upcoming census."
FAIR estimates 18.6 million illegal aliens were living in the U.S. in 2024, when the average congressional district included 761,000 residents.
That means the illegal alien population was the equivalent of 24 congressional districts at the time of the 2020 Census.
