Amerika Posted on 2025-01-23 15:22:00

Trump "removes" the right to automatic citizenship at birth in the US: What happens now?!

From Edel Strazimiri

Trump "removes" the right to automatic citizenship at birth in the US:

Four Democratic-led states will ask a federal judge in Seattle on Thursday to block the administration of US President Donald Trump from implementing a Republican executive order that limits the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States.

The executive order has already become the subject of five lawsuits from civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, who call it flagrantly unconstitutional.

Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle is scheduled to hear arguments on a request by Democratic state attorneys general from Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon for a temporary restraining order that would prevent the Trump administration from carrying out a key component of his immigration crackdown.

The executive order, which Trump signed on Monday after taking office, directs US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the US if neither their mother nor their father is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.

In a brief filed late Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department described the order as an “integral part” of the president’s efforts “to address this country’s broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at our southern border.” The lawsuit filed in Seattle has moved forward the fastest of the five cases brought over the executive order. It has been assigned to Coughenour, an appointee of former Republican President Ronald Reagan.

Absent judicial intervention, any child born after February 19th whose mothers or fathers are not citizens or lawful permanent residents will be subject to deportation and will be prevented from obtaining Social Security numbers, various government benefits, and the ability to work legally as they grow up.

More than 150,000 newborns will be denied citizenship each year if Trump's order is allowed to take effect , the Democratic-led states argue. The lawsuits argue that Trump's executive order violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen.

Democratic state attorneys general say the meaning of the citizenship clause was strengthened 127 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that children born in the United States to noncitizen parents are entitled to U.S. citizenship. The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868 after the Civil War and overturned the Supreme Court's infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, which declared that the U.S. Constitution did not apply to enslaved blacks.

But the Justice Department argued in its brief that the 14th Amendment had never been interpreted to extend universal citizenship to all native-born citizens and that the 1898 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark only concerned children of permanent residents.

The Justice Department said the four-state case also “crosses multiple threshold hurdles.” It said only individuals, not states, can pursue claims under the statehood clause and that states lack legal standing to sue over Trump’s order.

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