FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 2, 2026
Washington, D.C.–The Oversight Project's REPAIR Initiative today told the Census Bureau to finish the job: stop counting illegal aliens and noncitizens toward House seats and electoral votes. The Trump Administration must limit the Apportionment Count of the Census to American citizens ONLY. Illegal aliens and other noncitizens should not be given political benefit by being included in the Census apportionment count.
The number of House seats is fixed. A seat credited to one State for its illegal alien and noncitizen population is a seat taken from another, and it stays there for a decade. No court has held that illegal aliens must be counted, and Congress gave the Secretary of Commerce broad authority over the Census. Apportionment allocates political power. It is not a benefit owed to illegal aliens and noncitizens. The comment urges the Bureau to finalize the exclusion of illegal aliens and noncitizens from the apportionment count, preserve the President’s role in settling the apportionment, adopt the finding that counting illegal aliens creates perverse incentives to violate federal law, and give states citizenship data for redistricting.
President Trump has warned that the States that hobble Federal efforts to enforce duly-enacted immigration laws should not be rewarded with greater representation. Sanctuary states like California and New York do exactly that, then collect extra House seats and electoral votes for the unlawfully present population they shield from federal law enforcement.
Marshall Yates, Strategic Counsel at the Oversight Project gave this statement:
“The Constitution provides representation to the American people, not citizens of other countries or illegal aliens. Noncitizens cannot vote for Congress, so they should not decide how much power each state holds in it. Every district inflated due to its noncitizen population is a seat taken from American citizens. Apportionment must be based on Americans. Period.”
Jeff Clark, Oversight Project Vice President of Litigation, gave this statement:
“Allowing illegal aliens to be counted in the Census is a perversion of our political system. And as long as they are counted, sanctuary States’ systematic violation of federal immigration law is not policed or cabined, it is affirmatively encouraged. We should not tolerate lawlessness in the immigration realm. More illegality just breeds more contempt for the law. Many representatives in Congress are essentially sitting in seats stolen from law-abiding States, using the tactic of importing illegal aliens into their midst.”
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Oversight Project Census CommentOpen PDF