The Census Scam: How Sanctuary States Steal Congressional Seats and Electoral Votes

California would be the biggest winner in the sanctuary vote scam, as it would gain 11 more congressional seats due to immigrants and their young children being counted in the census.

President Trump is once again pushing to exclude illegal aliens from the census count used to determine congressional representation and Electoral College votes.

On January 20, 2025, he rescinded a Biden-era executive order that had mandated counting all residents regardless of immigration status, signaling his intent to revisit the policy. The president argues that including undocumented immigrants dilutes the political power of U.S. citizens and amounts to a form of voter suppression.

Trump declared that “States adopting policies that encourage illegal aliens to enter this country and that hobble Federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws passed by Congress should not be rewarded with greater representation in the House of Representatives”.

Liberal states are already mobilizing resistance, as they did during Trump’s first term when challengers led by New York, along with cities, counties, and immigrant rights groups, argued that Trump’s move could leave several million people uncounted and cause California, Texas and New Jersey to lose House seats.

New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump of trying to “punish states that are immigrant-rich” and “transfer power from those states that have significant number of immigrants to those that do not”, with groups including the ACLU immediately filing lawsuits arguing the policy violates the Constitution and federal law.

The scale of sanctuary jurisdictions protecting illegal aliens is staggering. The Center for Immigration Studies identifies 13 sanctuary states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington, along with 220 sanctuary cities and counties across the United States.

California became the most populous sanctuary state after the passage of the California Values Act in October 2017, followed by Illinois which expanded its sanctuary law in 2021, banning alien detention centers and prohibiting local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE.

The major sanctuary cities include some of America’s largest urban centers. Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the U.S. with almost 4 million people, has refused to honor ICE detainers since July 2014. San Francisco, which proudly proclaims on its official website that “we are a sanctuary city, now, tomorrow and forever,” codified its status with policies that rule out immigration detainer compliance.

New York City’s sanctuary policies have led to egregious crimes, while Seattle, with 754,000 residents, has adhered to a policy of not asking about immigration status since 2003. Denver became an illegal alien sanctuary based on an April 2014 Sheriff Department memo stating that Denver no longer honors immigration detainers.

The