A federal judge temporarily blocks Trump's order to finish birthright rights

policy

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's executive order repealing the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship regardless of oldsters' immigration status.

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour ruled within the case filed by the states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, which argued that the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court case law had established the birthright to citizenship.

The case is one among five lawsuits filed by 22 states and various immigrant rights groups across the country. The lawsuits include personal statements from attorneys general who’re U.S. residents by birth and names of pregnant women who fear their children is not going to turn out to be U.S. residents.

The order, signed by Trump on Inauguration Day, is about to take effect on February 19. One of the lawsuits says it could affect tons of of hundreds of individuals born within the country. According to the four-state lawsuit filed in Seattle, in 2022 there have been about 255,000 births of citizen children of moms who were within the country illegally and about 153,000 births of two of those parents.

The United States is one among roughly 30 countries where birthright citizenship – the principle of “ius soli” or “right to the soil” – applies. Most are within the Americas, including Canada and Mexico.

The lawsuits argue that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship to people born and naturalized within the U.S. and that states have interpreted the amendment that way for a century.

The amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction therein are citizens of the United States and of the State in which they reside.”

Trump's order establishes that children of non-citizens are usually not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and directs federal agencies not to acknowledge the citizenship of youngsters whose parents shouldn’t have at the very least citizenship.

In 1898, a vital case involving birthright occurred. The Supreme Court ruled that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, was a U.S. citizen because he was born within the country. After a visit abroad, the federal government refused him re-entry on the grounds that he was not a citizen inside the meaning of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

However, some immigration restriction advocates have argued that this case clearly applies to children whose parents were each legal immigrants. They say it's less clear whether it applies to children whose parents reside within the country illegally.

Trump's order prompted attorneys general to reveal their personal ties to birthright citizenship. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, for instance, a native U.S. citizen and the country's first Chinese-American elected attorney general, said the lawsuit was personal to him.

“There is no legitimate legal debate on this issue. But the fact that Trump is completely wrong will not stop him from now causing serious harm to American families like mine,” Tong said this week.

One of the lawsuits in search of to dam the manager order involves the case of a pregnant woman, identified as “Carmen,” who will not be a citizen but has lived within the United States for greater than 15 years and has a pending visa application to accomplish that could lead on to everlasting residence status.

“Depriving children of the 'priceless treasure' of citizenship is a grave violation,” the lawsuit says. “It denies them the full membership in U.S. society to which they are entitled.”