Trump Attempts to End Birthright Citizenship Through Executive Order

Today, President Trump revealed his plan to issue an executive order, attempting to end birthright citizenship of children born to undocumented parents in the United States. The 14th amendment of the Constitution grants citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. The Constitution can only be amended by a vote by two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states.

The move comes after the pentagon announced yesterday that it will send approximately 5,200 troops to the U.S. southern border, in an attempt to deter the thousands of asylum seekers and refugees traveling primarily from Honduras aka the "migrant caravan."

Steven Choi, Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition, issued the following statement:

"Another day, another desperate Trump political ploy attacking immigrants. Deploying military troops against asylum seekers a thousand miles away and stripping citizenship from babies is an attack on the very foundation of this country. But a man who has never read the Constitution cannot rewrite it just to score political points. Get ready to fight Mr. Trump, immigrants have made America great for generations and we're not going anywhere."

Background

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment clearly states: "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."

For more than 115 years, the Supreme Court has affirmed that the 14th Amendment means that the fundamental measure of citizenship in the United States is rooted in the soil on which an American is born or naturalized, and has rejected the argument that children born in the United States could be denied citizenship based on their parents' immigration status.

The Citizenship Clause was adopted in the wake of the Dred Scott decision to foreclose the possibility of an unequal class system of people born in the United States. Citizenship upon birth is enshrined in the Constitution so that the fundamental promise of equality and opportunity that this country stands for will not be subject to the political whims of a shifting majority.