Missouri launches sweeping lawsuit to block census from counting illegal immigrants: 'hijack representation'

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During a White House briefing on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump spoke about the criminal illegal aliens that federal immigration agents had taken off the streets.

FIRST ON FOX: Missouri filed a sweeping federal lawsuit on Friday arguing the Census Bureau’s practice of counting illegal immigrants and visa holders is unconstitutional because it dilutes U.S. citizens’ votes and bolsters blue states' representation in Congress.

The lawsuit, led by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, alleges that Missouri was robbed of one congressional seat after the 2020 census because the apportionment process, conducted every ten years, involves counting certain foreigners living in the United States.

Missouri lawyers made an ambitious demand that the Census Bureau redo its population count from 2020 and exclude illegal immigrants and visa holders, and then recalculate how many seats each state should have in the House.

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The U.S. Census logo appears on census materials received in the mail with an invitation to fill out census information online on March 19, 2020, in San Anselmo, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The demand comes ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, as President Donald Trump is staring down the possibility of Democrats regaining House control.

The policy "steals federal representation from Missourians, and transfers it to States who artificially inflate their population by harboring illegal aliens," Missouri lawyers wrote in the complaint, filed in federal court.

Including people domiciled in a state in the apportionment process, which determines how many seats a state gets to have in the House, is a long-held practice that has seen various court challenges in recent decades. Those challenges have been unsuccessful, though the Supreme Court has declined to weigh in on the matter directly.

The Constitution says states' representation in Congress should be based on the "whole number of persons in each State," which Missouri lawyers said in their lawsuit makes for a "tainted apportionment base."

President Donald Trump in 2020 issued a presidential memorandum that directed the Commerce Department to exclude "illegal aliens from the apportionment base." The memo was immediately met with lawsuits and blocked by a three-judge panel. The Supreme Court did not rule on the matter before President Joe Biden took office, and Biden revoked Trump’s memo.

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Catherine Hanaway speaks to reporters after Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced her appointment as the state’s next attorney general on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025, at the governor’s Capitol office in Jefferson City, Missouri. (AP Photo/David A. Lieb)

The lawsuit also comes days after the U.S. Census released its 2024 population estimates, showing gains in red states and losses in blue states. 

A GOP-founded research group called the American Redistricting Project compiled maps based on recent Census data that showed red states would gain more seats in 2030 if only U.S. citizens were included in the population count.

White House deputy chief of staff James Blair raised alarm on social media this week about the group’s maps, highlighting how they showed that red states would significantly benefit if the population count included only U.S. citizens.

"Translation: not counting illegals in the census for purposes of apportionment (E.g., doing it the Constitutional way) moves a net 22 House Seats & Electoral Votes from Blue States to Red States," Blair wrote.

Missouri's lawsuit alleged that the estimated millions of immigrants living in the country illegally are concentrated in blue states, making their populations appear bigger in the U.S. Census and allowing the states to gain more representation in Congress. Democrats have widely rejected excluding illegal immigrants from the population counts.

Missouri lawyers also suggested that blue states are incentivized to implement policies that benefit illegal immigrants because the immigrants’ presence bolsters their population numbers and therefore the number of representatives they can have in Congress.

"Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the fact they gain political power due to the presence of more illegal aliens, States like California and New York now intentionally undermine federal authority by defending the interests of illegal aliens," the Missouri attorneys write.

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In a statement, Hanaway said Missouri voters "can no longer ignore the ongoing denial of their right to self-government and fair representation."

"The framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment never intended an absurd system where 15 million illegal trespassers can hijack representation in the federal government and commandeer the path to the White House," Hanaway said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of Commerce for comment.