Trump pushes census excluding undocumented immigrants, sparking legal and redistricting battles ahead of 2026 elections.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing for a new census that excludes people living illegally in the United States, amid a partisan fight for redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The move is part of an overall drive to prioritize Americans first over those living illegally in the United States, a key point of Trump's "America First" campaign.

Indeed, the census, taken once a decade, includes everyone living within the United States, regardless of their immigration status. The next one is scheduled for 2030.

Trump has taken issue with this practice, believing that including illegal migrants in the population count can distort the political process, a belief shared by his supporters.

That's because the larger the population of a state, the more representatives in the House that state gets.

Theoretically, states with populations padded with people living illegally in the United States could result in more representatives, which could shift the balance of power in Washington, critics said.

However, the issue is complicated, and such a dynamic could negatively impact Republicans just as much as Democrats, experts said.

Trump posted on social media earlier this week that he had instructed the Department of Commerce to begin a new, more accurate census, using data from the 2024 Presidential Election. "People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS," he posted, although some experts said a president lacks the legal authority to unilaterally order a new census.

The 14th Amendment of the Constitution stipulates that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed." "Indians" referred to the native inhabitants who lived here before European settlers arrived.

The U.S. Commerce Department's Census Bureau stipulates on its website that "all people (citizens and noncitizens) with a usual residence in the United States are included in the resident population for the census."

Trump's remarks about the U.S. census came after his strong advocacy for the Republican Party to gain additional U.S. House seats in the upcoming midterm elections by redrawing district boundaries.

The Republican Party's move to reshape Texas's congressional districts -- widely criticized as partisan gerrymandering -- has ignited a nationwide political clash.

Darrell West, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, told Xinhua: "The census numbers are crucial for political redistricting."

This is not the first time Trump has pushed for a new census that excludes illegal immigrants. In 2020, Trump -- during his first term -- signed a presidential memorandum to leave out unauthorized immigrants from the numbers used to divide up seats in Congress among the states. The plan was challenged in court and eventually blocked.

In 2021, former President Joe Biden reversed Trump's policy with an executive order, restoring the longstanding practice of counting all residents, regardless of immigration status. Trump revoked Biden's order on the first day of his second term, though it does not change the 2020 census results.

Trump's latest attempt to exclude people living illegally in the United States from the new census, however, would be problematic, according to some experts.

"A new, mid-decade census would be a badly prepared patchwork, because it takes a few years for the Census Bureau to be ready to count every human being in the United States," Clay Ramsay, senior research associate at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, told Xinhua. "As a bad patchwork, it would undercount various groups."

"A state whose undocumented people are not counted could wind up with one or two fewer seats in Congress, because it suddenly has 'less population.' This could well happen to California, but also to Texas and Florida -- two red states," Ramsay said.

The census is used to create congressional maps, and some experts note the difficulty of conducting a census and having it finished in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

"Conducting a census of over 330 million people is an enormous and expensive undertaking, and it is unlikely that it could be conducted in time to be used for new congressional maps for 2026," Christopher Galdieri, a political science professor at Saint Anselm College, told Xinhua. "And that's setting aside inevitable legal challenges and such."