MINNEAPOLIS (KFGO/WCCO) – A group of Democratic state attorneys general filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday to stop President Trump’s executive order that seeks to eliminate birthright citizenship. The order cancels the constitutional guarantee that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ status.
Trump’s roughly 700-word executive order, issued late Monday, amounts to a fulfillment of something he’s talked about during the presidential campaign. But whether it succeeds is far from certain as attorneys general in 18 states and two cities challenged the order in court on Tuesday, seeking to block the president.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was among the attorneys general announcing the suit, along with the City of San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Ellison tells WCCO that birthright citizenship is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that the Supreme Court has twice ruled that birthright citizenship extends to everyone born in the United States, including the children of immigrants regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
“Black people were (told) that they could not be citizens, and so when we passed the 14th Amendment, it was directly to refute that constitutional case and establish a new constitutional precedent of birthright citizenship,” explains Ellison.
Ellison said he fully expects the cast to again land at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The states that joined the suit are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.
The 14th Amendment’s first sentence provides the guarantee 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.”
Despite being in place for decades and enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, Trump and allies dispute the reading of the amendment and say there need to be tougher standards on becoming a citizen.
Not long after Trump signed the order, immigrant rights groups filed suit to stop it.
Chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts along with other immigrant rights advocates filed a suit in New Hampshire federal court.
The suit asks the court to find the order to be unconstitutional. It highlights the case of a woman identified as “Carmen,” who is pregnant but is not a citizen. The lawsuit says she has lived in the United States for more than 15 years and has a pending visa application that could lead to permanent status. She has no other immigration status, and the father of her expected child has no immigration status either, the suit says.
“Stripping children of the ‘priceless treasure’ of citizenship is a grave injury,” the suit said. “It denies them the full membership in U.S. society to which they are entitled.”
What is the history of the issue?
The 14th Amendment did not always guarantee birthright citizenship to all U.S.-born people. Congress did not authorize citizenship for all Native Americans born in the United States, for instance, until 1924.
The 14th Amendment was passed by Congress in 1866 after the Civil War and during the period of Reconstruction. The amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 by three-fourths of the states. By extending citizenship to those born in the U.S., the amendment nullified an 1857 Supreme Court decision (Dred Scott v. Sandford), which had held that those descended from slaves could not be citizens.
In 1898 an important birthright citizenship case unfolded in the U.S. Supreme Court. The court held that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, was a U.S. citizen because he was born in the country. After a trip abroad, he had faced denied reentry by the federal government on the grounds that he wasn’t a citizen under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
But some advocates of immigration restrictions have argued that while the case clearly applied to children born to parents who are both legal immigrants, it’s less clear whether it applies to children born to parents without legal status.
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