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US judge blocks Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship US judge temporarily blocks Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship
(about 1 hour later)
Judge rules in favor of states who sued over president’s executive order, which was set to take effect on 19 February Executive order signed by Trump, which was to take effect on 19 February, is already the subject of five lawsuits
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s executive order ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship regardless of the parents’ immigration status. A federal judge in Seattle blocked Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday from implementing an executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.
US district judge John C Coughenour ruled in the case brought by the states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, which argue the 14th amendment and supreme court case law have cemented birthright citizenship. US district judge John Coughenour at the urging of four Democratic-led states issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, which the Republican president signed on Monday during his first day on office.
The case is one of five lawsuits being brought by 22 states and a number of immigrants rights groups across the country. The suits include personal testimonies from attorneys general who are US citizens by birthright, and names pregnant women who are afraid their children won’t become US citizens. The order has already become the subject of five lawsuits by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, who call it a flagrant violation of the US constitution.
Signed by Trump on Inauguration Day, the order is slated to take effect on 19 February. It could affect hundreds of thousands of people born in the country, according to one of the lawsuits. In 2022, there were about 255,000 births of citizen children to mothers living in the country illegally and about 153,000 births to two such parents, according to the four-state suit filed in Seattle. “Under this order, babies being born today don’t count as US citizens,” the Washington assistant attorney general Lane Polozola told Judge John Coughenour at the start of a hearing in Seattle.
The US is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship – the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” – is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them. Polozola – on behalf of Democratic state attorneys general from Washington state, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon – urged the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the administration from carrying out this key element of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The lawsuits argue that the 14th amendment to the US constitution guarantees citizenship for people born and naturalized in the US, and states have been interpreting the amendment that way for a century. In a press conference outside the court after the restraining order was issued, Polozola said: “This is step one but to hear the judge from the bench say that in his 40 years as a judge, he has never seen something so blatantly unconstitutional, sets the tone for the seriousness of this effort.”
Ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the civil war, the amendment says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Polozola and the other challengers argue that Trump’s action violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the constitution’s 14th amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
Trump’s order asserts that the children of noncitizens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and orders federal agencies to not recognize citizenship for children who don’t have at least one parent who is a citizen. Trump in his executive order directed US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the US if neither their mother nor father is a US citizen or legal permanent resident.
A key case involving birthright citizenship unfolded in 1898. The supreme court held that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, was a US citizen because he was born in the country. After a trip abroad, he faced being denied reentry by the federal government on the grounds that he wasn’t a citizen under the Chinese Exclusion Act. In a brief filed late on Wednesday, the US justice department called the order an “integral part” of the president’s efforts “to address this nation’s broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border”.
But some advocates of immigration restrictions have argued that case clearly applied to children born to parents who were both legal immigrants. They say it is less clear whether it applies to children born to parents living in the country illegally. The lawsuit filed in Seattle has been progressing more quickly than the four other cases brought over the executive order. It has been assigned to Coughenour, an appointee of the Republican former president Ronald Reagan.
Trump’s executive order prompted attorneys general to share their personal connections to birthright citizenship. Connecticut attorney general William Tong, for instance, a US citizen by birthright and the nation’s first Chinese American elected attorney general, said the lawsuit was personal for him. The judge potentially could rule from the bench after hearing arguments, or he could wait to write a decision ahead of Trump’s order taking effect.
“There is no legitimate legal debate on this question. But the fact that Trump is dead wrong will not prevent him from inflicting serious harm right now on American families like my own,” Tong said this week. Under the order, any children born after 19 February whose mothers or fathers are not citizens or lawful permanent residents would be subject to deportation and would be prevented from obtaining social security numbers, various government benefits and the ability, as they get older, to work lawfully.
One of the lawsuits aimed at blocking the executive order includes the case of a pregnant woman, identified as “Carmen,” who is not a citizen but has lived in the United States for more than 15 years and has a pending visa application that could lead to permanent residency status. More than 150,000 newborn children would be denied citizenship annually if Trump’s order is allowed to stand, according to the Democratic-led states.
“Stripping children of the ‘priceless treasure’ of citizenship is a grave injury,” the suit says. “It denies them the full membership in US society to which they are entitled.” Democratic state attorneys general have said that the understanding of the constitution’s citizenship clause was cemented 127 years ago when the US supreme court held that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to American citizenship.
The 14th amendment was adopted in 1868 following the civil war and overturned the supreme court’s notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision that had declared that the constitution’s protections did not apply to enslaved Black people.
But the justice department in its brief argued that the 14th amendment had never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born in the country, and that the supreme court’s 1898 ruling in United States v Wong Kim Ark concerned only children of permanent residents.
The justice department said the case by the four states also “flunks multiple threshold hurdles”. The department said that only individuals, not states, can pursue claims under the citizenship clause and that the states lack the necessary legal standing to sue over Trump’s order.
Thirty-six of Trump’s Republican allies in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday separately introduced legislation to restrict automatic citizenship to only children born to citizens or lawful permanent residents.