作者： admin

As one of the first policy moves of his second term as the 47th U.S. President, Donald Trump has followed through on a years-long campaign promise by signing an executive order to revoke automatic birthright citizenship for nearly all children born on U.S. soil to non-citizen parents. Now, after lower courts blocked the order from going into effect amid widespread legal pushback, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in the high-stakes constitutional case on April 1.

Trump’s order targets children born to two groups of non-citizen residents: those residing in the U.S. without legal authorization, and those staying in the country on temporary visas. The policy’s roots stretch back to decades of anti-immigration rhetoric that frames birthright citizenship as a pull factor for unauthorized border crossings and the controversial practices of “anchor babies” and “birth tourism” – where foreign nationals travel to the U.S. specifically to secure citizenship for their newborn children before returning to their home countries.

The future of the policy hinges on interpretation of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War to codify citizenship for formerly enslaved Black people. The amendment’s opening clause explicitly states that “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.” Trump and his administration argue that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excludes children of unauthorized immigrants and temporary visa holders, a reading that has been uniformly rejected by lower courts and most constitutional legal scholars.

This interpretation of the 14th Amendment is not new. The Supreme Court first cemented the broad application of birthright citizenship in the landmark 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The case centered on a U.S.-born child of Chinese legal immigrants who was denied re-entry to the country after a trip abroad. The Supreme Court ruled in Wong’s favor, holding that a person’s birth on U.S. soil grants citizenship regardless of their parents’ immigration status, with only narrow exceptions for children of foreign diplomats and other sovereign agents. That ruling has stood unchallenged for more than 125 years.

“Wong Kim Ark vs United States affirmed that regardless of race or the immigration status of one’s parents, all persons born in the United States were entitled to all of the rights that citizenship offered,” explained Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. “The court has not re-examined this issue since then.”

Most legal experts agree that the president lacks the unilateral authority to rewrite a foundational constitutional principle via executive order, a power that would require a full constitutional amendment. Amending the Constitution, however, is a notoriously high bar: it requires a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers of Congress followed by ratification from three-quarters of U.S. states. Given the deeply polarized current state of U.S. politics, such an outcome is widely considered functionally impossible for this controversial proposal.

Constitutional scholar Saikrishna Prakash, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, noted that while Trump can direct federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement to apply a narrower interpretation of citizenship, any denial of citizenship will immediately trigger legal challenge. “He’s doing something that’s going to upset a lot of people, but ultimately this will be decided by the courts,” Prakash said. “This is not something he can decide on his own.”

Past Supreme Court precedent also undermines the Trump administration’s position. In the 1982 case Plyler v. Doe, the high court rejected Texas’ argument that unauthorized immigrants were not covered by the 14th Amendment’s jurisdiction clause, ruling that all people physically present in the U.S. are subject to U.S. law and entitled to the constitution’s protections.

The policy fight over birthright citizenship carries major demographic consequences. Pew Research Center data shows that in 2016, around 250,000 babies were born to unauthorized immigrant parents in the U.S., a 36% drop from the 2007 peak. By 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 1.2 million U.S.-born citizens with unauthorized immigrant parents. Analysis from the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute think tank projects that ending automatic birthright citizenship would create a growing underclass of non-citizens born in the U.S., pushing the total unauthorized population to 4.7 million by 2050 when accounting for second-generation descendants.

Trump has repeatedly stated that he would deport entire families, including U.S.-born children, to avoid family separation, writing that the only way to avoid splitting families is to deport all members together. Lower courts across the country have already struck down Trump’s order, with district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington issuing nationwide injunctions to block its implementation. Seattle-based Judge John Coughenour called the order “blatantly unconstitutional”.

The Trump administration appealed these injunctions to the Supreme Court, arguing that lower court judges should have restricted authority to block federal policy. In a ruling last June, the conservative majority on the high court sided with the administration, limiting the power of district courts to issue nationwide injunctions against presidential orders. Trump called the decision a “big win” and a “monumental victory for the constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law”, though the ruling only addressed judicial authority, not the core question of whether Trump’s executive order itself is constitutional. The three liberal justices on the court dissented, warning the ruling would have the effect of eroding individual civil rights.

Around the globe, more than 30 countries practice unrestricted birthright citizenship, while other major nations including the United Kingdom and Australia only grant automatic citizenship if at least one parent is a citizen or permanent resident.

A federal judge delivered a landmark ruling this week that blocks the Trump administration’s unilateral termination of legal parole status for hundreds of thousands of migrants who entered the United States through the Biden-era CBP One program, finding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acted beyond its legal powers when it revoked the protected status of program participants.

First launched in 2023 under the administration of former Democratic President Joe Biden, the CBP One initiative was designed to streamline southern border processing for asylum seekers. The program required migrants to schedule appointments via a mobile app to enter the U.S., and granted successful participants two years of parole, a temporary legal status that allowed them to live and work legally in the country while their asylum claims proceeded through the backlogged immigration court system. By the time Trump took office for his second term, roughly 900,000 migrants had been approved for parole through the program.

Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration moved to end the CBP One parole program, re-purposing the app for a new ‘self-deportation’ initiative. In April of this year, DHS began sending mass emails to tens of thousands of program participants, notifying them their parole status had been terminated, ordering them to leave the country, and revoking their legal work authorization. The agency framed the move at the time as a response to what it called an ‘abuse of parole authority’ by the Biden administration, arguing the program had contributed to what it calls the worst border crisis in U.S. history.

But on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Allison Skye Borroughs of the District of Massachusetts rejected the Trump administration’s action in a sweeping 38-page decision. In her ruling, Borroughs wrote that the mass parole terminations exceeded DHS’s statutory authority under federal immigration law, and directly contradicted the procedural requirements laid out in the agency’s own existing regulations. The ruling immediately restores legal parole status for all program recipients nationwide who received a termination notice from DHS.

The case was brought by the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, three individual Venezuelan women directly impacted by the termination policy, and legal advocacy group Democracy Forward. The plaintiffs argued the mass termination was unlawful and violated the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies implement new rules. In their lawsuit, they noted that the policy change instantly pushed hundreds of thousands of people from legal status to being considered ‘illegal aliens’ overnight, upending lives that had been built legally in the U.S.

Reacting to the ruling, Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward called the decision a clear rejection of the administration’s attempt to erase the lawful status of hundreds of thousands of people with a single mass email. Carlina Velásquez, president of the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, added that for many Venezuelan families who had lived for months in fear and uncertainty after the termination notices were sent, the ruling brings long-awaited relief. A DHS spokesperson has not yet issued a formal response to the ruling, and administration officials have signaled they are likely to file an appeal, consistent with the administration’s pattern of challenging court rulings that block its restrictive immigration policies.

While the ruling restores temporary legal status to affected migrants, it does not guarantee permanent residency or long-term legal status for most program participants. The CBP One parole only grants a two-year term, during which asylum seekers must complete their immigration claims. Many recipients have already passed their two-year deadline, and dozens more will see their parole expire in the coming months, leaving their long-term status uncertain even after the court’s ruling.

The decision marks the latest legal setback for the Trump administration’s aggressive nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigration, which has included rolling back dozens of Biden-era immigration policies and ramping up deportation operations and enforcement efforts across the country.