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Illegal immigrants still count toward House seats, and a Trump voter says that's the danger.

A Trump Supporter Explains What Washington Won’t: Illegal Immigrants Count Toward House Seats

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanOctober 14, 2026 · 4 min read
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Asked what she liked most about President Trump, a woman at a Trump event did not talk about tariffs or rallies. She talked about the census. Closing the border was her top pick, she said in a video posted October 13, 2026, because the number of House seats each state gets depends on how many people live there, legally or not.

She is right about how the system works, and her timing was sharp. The public comment period on a Trump administration proposal to stop counting illegal immigrants toward House apportionment closed that same day.

“Determined just who’s there”

In the clip, posted on X by commentator Eric Daugherty, the woman, who is not named, explained her reasoning in plain terms. “That’s what a lot of people don’t realize is that House of Representatives population is determined just who’s there,” she said. “And so they’re trying to put more representatives into the House that are democratically sponsored. That’s a real danger.”

She also defended immigration enforcement. “I am supportive of ICE and all the good things that they do,” she said. “I know that they get a lot of bad press, but they are following the law. The problem is that the previous administrations have not followed the law.”

And she explained where her views come from. She said she had lived in Austria for a year, “which was geographically behind the Iron Curtain, even though politically it wasn’t at the time,” and had traveled through Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland under Soviet rule. “There was fear,” she said. “There was economic depression widespread.”

How apportionment actually works

The Constitution requires a census every ten years, and its core purpose is to divide the 435 seats in the House among the states. The Fourteenth Amendment directs that seats be apportioned by counting “the whole number of persons in each State.” In modern practice, that has meant counting residents regardless of citizenship or immigration status.

Because each state’s Electoral College votes equal its House seats plus its two senators, the census count also shapes presidential elections. A state with a large population of noncitizens, including people in the country illegally, can gain House seats and electoral votes from residents who cannot legally vote.

How much difference does it make? In a July 2020 analysis, the Pew Research Center estimated that removing unauthorized immigrants from the apportionment count would mean that “three states could each lose a seat they otherwise would have had and three others each could gain one.” Under that scenario, Pew projected, “California would lose two seats instead of one,” Florida and Texas would gain fewer seats, and “Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio would each hold onto a seat” they were otherwise projected to lose. Pew’s figures were projections and depended on its assumptions. A 2025 study in PNAS Nexus, cited by Roll Call, found that excluding unauthorized immigrants since 1980 would have had a roughly neutral effect on national control of the House and the Electoral College, because the seats shift among both red and blue states.

Pew estimated in 2025 that about 16 million immigrants in the United States lacked permanent legal status, according to Roll Call.

The rule on the table for 2030

On September 10, 2026, the Census Bureau published a proposed rule in the Federal Register setting new residence criteria for the 2030 census. According to the Congressional Research Service, it would keep green card holders in the apportionment count but exclude “illegal aliens and aliens whose legal status is less durable and indefinite in length than lawful permanent resident status.” CRS noted that this could cover some people who are in the country lawfully, such as those on temporary visas.

The proposal states the bureau’s view that “illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count.” The bureau is also considering using administrative records to determine legal status, and the proposal contemplates adding a citizenship question to the census form, Roll Call reported. Comments were due by October 13, 2026.

The plan follows a directive President Trump announced on August 7, 2025, when he wrote on Truth Social, as Fox News reported, that “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”

The fight ahead

This will not be settled quietly. Trump tried to exclude illegal immigrants from the 2020 apportionment count; the effort reached the Supreme Court, and pandemic delays pushed the final numbers into the Biden administration, which dropped it, Roll Call reported. New York Attorney General Letitia James said after the new proposal was released that her office is “exploring our legal options.”

Congress has weighed in, too. House Republicans passed a bill in 2024 to exclude noncitizens from apportionment, and Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., has sponsored a Senate bill to exclude illegal immigrants for 2030. None has become law.

Meanwhile, the border itself has changed. In June 2026, Border Patrol apprehended 9,848 people between ports of entry, about 94 percent below the Biden-era monthly average, The Center Square reported. Fewer new illegal arrivals means fewer people in the 2030 count who never should have been here at all.

Critics say the proposal conflicts with more than two centuries of counting every resident. Supporters say a seat in Congress should reflect the people a state is entitled to represent, not people who broke the law to get there. The woman at the Trump event has clearly picked her side, and she got there by watching what happens when people in power stop answering to the people.

Every illegal crossing quietly redraws the House map, and an ordinary voter at a Trump event understood that better than most of Washington.

Sources

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