Washington, D.C. – Due to population growth across the country over the past decade, the U.S. Census Bureau announced last week that Texas, Florida, and four other states will gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas will gain two seats in the House, and Florida will gain one.

Serena Prammanasudh, Field Leadership & Power Building Manager and Former Census Manager of United We Dream, said:

“Texas and Florida’s recent gains in congressional seats is a testament to the power of our movement, including the work immigrant youth led at UWD with over 168 census outreach volunteers in Texas and Florida to show our communities that we matter and we count. Ahead of the 2020 census, Trump did everything in his power to prevent our communities from being counted. He tried to stoke fear, including issuing an executive order to exclude undocumented people from the census and directing the Department of Commerce to collect citizenship data. These deliberate and anti-immigrant attacks prevented communities across the country, especially in Florida, from being fully represented.  

Still, immigrant youth stepped up to ensure that as many people as possible were able to make their voices heard. It is our voices that have pushed our representatives to prioritize our demands and pass meaningful immigration legislation, like the Dream & Promise and Farm Workforce Modernization bills which passed in the House in March. We worked hard to ensure our communities were counted, and these additional seats must properly represent our people! Partisan gerrymandering, which has always been used to disenfranchise Black and brown people, is unacceptable. We will continue to use our movement power to ensure that those elected to the newly acquired seats in Texas and Florida represent and address the needs of all of their constituents, regardless of immigration status, and that moving forward, the census is never weaponized against underrepresented communities of color. We matter. We count.”