The state of Alabama is suing the Department of Commerce and the Bureau of the Census to ensure illegal aliens are excluded from the 2020 census, which is used to apportion congressional seats.

Including people who in the country illegally would violate the 14th Amendment's requirement for an "actual enumeration" of the U.S. and other constitutional protections, the complaint states.

"The plaintiffs assert that because, under existing rules, seats are apportioned by total number of people – including illegal aliens – those states that have the highest concentrations of illegal aliens are gaining seats at the expense of states of Alabama, which stands to lose one of its seven existing representatives," said a report from the Center for Immigration Students.

The case is just the latest in a years-long battle over illegal aliens entering the United States, who are viewed largely as eventual Democratic voters.

President Trump has warned that without secure borders, there is no nation to protect and is pressing for the building of a wall along the southern border with Mexico.

CIS reported: "A likely recipient of Alabama's loss would be California, which already has 53 seats in the House of Representatives, and which has declared itself a sanctuary state and passed numerous measures to defeat federal attempts to enforce the immigration laws within its borders, thus ensuring that its population of illegal aliens and proportional share of seats in the House are sure to grow."

CIS said California even now is trying to attract more illegal aliens by proposing to grant them medical care.

"While the billion-dollar yearly estimate for a new, expanded Medi-Cal program might prove laughably low as even more illegal aliens relocate to the state to take advantage of the health coverage, the returns on the expenditure could be significant. California, becoming one of the few heavyweights in the House of Representatives, would likely be able to leverage its over-representation into bailouts and pork in future appropriations bills to offset the expense," the CIS report said.

"It would thus be rewarded for its recalcitrant behavior and propensity toward thumbing its nose at the federal government where immigration matters are concerned. There is something exceedingly distasteful, nearly obscene, in such a scenario, but it's not hard to predict," the report said.

The organization warned: "Under the existing rule, as they lose what few federal legislators they have, citizens of smaller states are in fact being disenfranchised in favor of aliens — illegal aliens at that. To claim that there will be no detrimental impact on those states, or their citizens, is disingenuous."

The complaint in U.S. District Court in Alabama seeks an order that illegal aliens must be excluded from population figures used for apportionment, the assignment of members of Congress to represent districts across the U.S.

Counting people who are in the country illegally violates the Administrative Procedures Act, the Constitution, the 14th Amendment and more, it claims.

"The residence rule is premised on an internally inconsistent and unreasoned reading of the Census Clause and governing statutes. The residence rule allocates persons deployed outside the United States on Census Day to the states where they have their usual stateside residence even though they are not physically present in a state on census day and do not currently reside in the United States.

"This demonstrates that it is a legal connection to a state that determines whether a person should be allocated to a state for apportionment purposes in defendants' view, not their physical presence in the state or where they currently usually live and sleep. But this allocative criterion is inconsistent with defendants' decision to allocate illegal aliens to the states where they make their factula residence even though they have no legal entitlement to reside in that state."

Further, it "creates perverse incentives for state to contravene the enforcement of federal immigration law in order to augment their share of political power and federal funding at the expense of states that cooperate with federal authorities to enforce the immigration laws."

The complaint contends, "Including illegal aliens in the apportionment base will deprive Alabama and its citizens of their rightful share of political power in both Congress and the Electoral College while unconstitutionally augmenting the political power of states with high numbers of illegal aliens."