EXCLUSIVE: Commerce Department to ‘Immediately’ Make Census ‘Reflect the Number of Legal Residents’ in US

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—After President Donald Trump called for a new census excluding illegal immigrants, the Department of Commerce told the Daily Signal it will “immediately” change course to “reflect the number of legal residents in the United States.” 

Trump ordered the Department of Commerce to start work on a new census in which illegal immigrants will not be counted.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Thursday. 

A Commerce spokesperson told The Daily Signal it will follow the president’s mandate.

“The Census Bureau will immediately adopt modern technology tools for use in the census to better understand our robust census data,” the spokesperson told The Daily Signal.  “We will accurately analyze the data to reflect the number of legal residents in the United States.”

In July, Trump backed a bill from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that would exclude illegal immigrants from the census. 

This is not the president’s first effort to exclude illegal immigrants from the census count.

In 2020, Trump issued a presidential memorandum instructing the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, not to include illegal aliens in the census.

“My Administration will not support giving congressional representation to aliens who enter or remain in the country unlawfully, because doing so would create perverse incentives and undermine our system of government,” Trump said in the memorandum. “Just as we do not give political power to people who are here temporarily, we should not give political power to people who should not be here at all.”

A federal court blocked the effort in 2020, however. Trump also wanted a citizenship question added to the census form. The Supreme Court blocked that move.