Draft rule proposed to exclude undocumented immigrants from 2030 census and remove race, sexual orientation questions

A draft rule circulated by the U.S. Department of Commerce would prevent the 2030 census from counting undocumented immigrants and eliminate questions about race and sexual orientation, according to documents reviewed by WIRED. The proposal frames the removal of demographic data as necessary to protect against 'distortions' created by 'personal questions.'

The draft rule states that 'illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count,' arguing they are not 'true inhabitants' or 'persons with "usual residence" in the United States.' It suggests reintroducing a citizenship question to the census, a move previously attempted during the Trump administration and blocked by the Supreme Court in 2019.

The Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment. Cornell University professor Danah Boyd, who studies census methodology, said eliminating these data points would make it difficult to assess whether congressional districts are predominantly composed of minorities or to identify inequalities. 'If we don’t know certain things, we can’t challenge them politically,' Boyd said.

Federal employees at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Commerce, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WIRED that removing undocumented immigrants from the census could cause localities with high immigrant populations to lose critical federal funding. They noted that some programs rely on racial categories like 'American Indian or Alaska Native' to determine grant allocations for Tribal entities.

Boyd and other experts also warned that adding a citizenship question could deter undocumented individuals or those with undocumented family members from participating in the census, further suppressing population counts. 'When you eliminate people and when you make people too afraid to participate because of the eliminations of other peoples, you will actually purposefully suppress the number of people who are in a geography,' Boyd said. 'And that is a way of trying to make certain that you erase their political power and their access to federal funding.'