(TNND) — President Donald Trump said Thursday morning that he's seeking a new census that wouldn't count undocumented immigrants.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump said via Truth Social. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS."

The White House press office, Commerce Department and Census Bureau did not respond to a request for comment by the time this story was published.

Trump tried adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, but that effort was rejected in 2019 by the Supreme Court based on the administration’s reasoning at the time.

It’s unclear what specific approach Trump’s new administration might take in omitting undocumented immigrants from the census.

But legal and political experts expressed skepticism about Trump’s ability to make good on the pledge he made in his social media post.

“Now, having a citizenship question is a far cry from not including undocumented people in the counting,” UC Davis law professor Kevin R. Johnson said. “The constitution and the various congressional statutes dealing with the census seem to require that all people be counted, not ... all citizens or all people except undocumented immigrants. So, I think that this is a Truth Social statement, as always is the case, that devil be in the details, and what kind of proposal it came out and how he tried to justify it.”

The next decennial census, conducted every 10 years, is set for April 2030.

The count is mandated by the Constitution.

And both citizens and noncitizens are counted, according to the Census Bureau.

The count determines the number of seats each state has in Congress and how billions of dollars in federal funds are spent.

“What would be unprecedented is conducting a completely new census,” said Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute.

There's nothing necessarily preventing Trump from trying to conduct a mid-cycle census, Jones said.

But it’s unclear how the data from an irregular census would be used.

“There would definitely be challenges against using that to reapportion U.S. House seats and thus electoral college seats,” Jones said.

The Census Bureau spends years preparing for the count every 10 years, Jones said.

It’s possible the Census Bureau gets going on a new count before Trump leaves office if it really commits the time and energy to that goal, Jones said.

But that’s unlikely to leave Trump any time to use the data, even for distributing federal funding, before the 2028 election.

“Now maybe if JD Vance is president, he would choose to use them. But probably a president Gavin Newsom or president Gretchen Whitmer would not,” Jones said, referring to Trump’s vice president and the Democratic governors of California and Michigan, who are among the potential candidates for the next presidential election.

Casey Burgat, the Legislative Affairs Program Director at George Washington University, also said a census before 2030 would get challenged as a basis to apportion seats in Congress.

And he said Trump doesn’t have the unilateral power to change the census.

“It would just take so many people to agree that this is something that is constitutional, legal, and should be done, to say nothing of how fast they need to do it,” Burgat said. “It's a huge uphill battle for him to actually get it done.”

Ernesto Sagás, an expert in politics and U.S. immigration policies who teaches at Colorado State University, said Trump is throwing “spaghetti” against the wall to see if it will stick with the new Truth Social post.

“On the face of it, it’s preposterous,” Sagás said. “The Constitution is very clear. You have to count every single person. More specifically, you have to count every living person as of April the first of the decennial year. So, it's very, very clear. Has been standard policy for decades."

Sagás said he believes this is related to the redistricting fight in Texas, where Republicans are trying to gain House seats.

Sagás said Republicans think they can gain an electoral advantage over Democrats by not counting undocumented immigrants toward congressional apportionment.

“Which on the face of it, it sounds like a good strategy. Maybe not a very legal one or ethical one, but a good strategy,” Sagás said. “But it could also backfire, because if you look at red states like Florida ... or Texas, also those are states that have a very large immigrant population. So, it is kind of a sword that cuts both ways."

Jones made a similar point.

“The reality is, two of the states that are most likely to be harmed if you no longer count undocumented immigrants in terms of congressional representation ... are red states, Florida and Texas,” Jones said.

Johnson, who is an expert in immigration law and policy, said Trump’s statements about immigrants might depress census participation.

“I could see many immigrants, legal as well as undocumented, being fearful of having any contact with census workers or any federal workers,” he said.

That might result in less reliable census data, Johnson said.

Jones said it’s possible the administration simply tries to reintroduce the citizenship question to the census form rather than omitting noncitizens from the count.

But he, too, said that’s likely to dissuade noncitizen census participation.

Sagás said there’s value in having a census count that includes everyone, not just citizens.

“Ultimately, it's all about what you know,” he said. “So, if you don't know what your population is like, the age, the gender, the different income levels, housing, all that stuff that is being collected, you're doing a disservice to you and to your constituents.”

Burgat said Trump might have “dual purposes” for going on social media to talk about the census and undocumented immigrants.

“No. 1, it's a distraction for a lot of things going against him right now, from the Epstein file release to his unpopularity ratings, to the town halls for Republicans. The list goes on and on,” Burgat said. “Plus, it gives his base a rallying cry for if and when something goes against the president next election, that they can say that this undercuts the results, because they were rigged from the start, and he was trying to fix it.”