US border patrol agents intercept a group of migrants who arrived in the US via the Rio Grande.

US President Donald Trump has blocked undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2020 census that will determine congressional representation across the United States.

The discretion delegated to the executive branch to determine who qualifies as an ’inhabitant’ includes authority to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status, read the order, issued Tuesday. Excluding these illegal aliens from the apportionment base is more consonant with the principles of representative democracy underpinning our system of government.

The order particularly targets the state of California, which it claims is home to more than 2.2 million illegal aliens.

Including these illegal aliens in the population of the state for the purpose of apportionment could result in the allocation of two or three more congressional seats than would otherwise be allocated, the order stated.

The US president also issued a statement, asserting that the latest attempt was to take on the radical left.

There used to be a time when you could proudly declare, ’I am a citizen of the United States,’ Trump said. But now, the radical left is trying to erase the existence of this concept and conceal the number of illegal aliens in our country. This is all part of a broader left-wing effort to erode the rights of Americans citizens, and I will not stand for it.

Since his inauguration, Trump has been facing protests and rallies condemning his divisive rhetoric and controversial immigration policy.