Trump Vows to Deny Right of Citizenship by Birth to Children of Illegal Immigrants If Elected in 2024
By Staff, Agencies
Former hawkish US president Donald Trump has pledged to deny children of illegal immigrants in the US the constitutional right to automatic citizenship by birth if he wins the presidential race in 2024.
Trump – so far, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination – declared on Tuesday in a campaign video posted on Twitter that he would issue an executive order directing federal agencies to stop what he described as birthright citizenship.
Such an action by Trump will definitely face a legal challenge, since it contradicts how a 19th-century amendment to the US Constitution has long been interpreted.
The right to citizenship stems from the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that purportedly ended the slavery of blacks in the southern US states and overturned a Supreme Court ruling that barred slaves and free Africans from obtaining US citizenship.
The amendment granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including those formerly enslaved, and has been interpreted to mean whether or not the parents were in the country lawfully.
The proposed executive order, scheduled for the first day of Trump's second term, would require at least one parent to be a US citizen or legal permanent resident for their children to automatically become US citizens, his campaign said in a press release.
When Trump was president in 2018, he said he planned to issue an executive order to limit birthright citizenship, but never followed through. Many legal scholars at the time were skeptical that Trump could use executive power to roll back the right.
Trump on Tuesday also criticized Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent who defeated him in 2020 and is seeking re-election in 2024, over the record number of immigrants caught crossing the border illegally in recent years, calling the citizenship right for children born on US soil a "magnet". Trump noted that many countries restrict citizenship rights for non-citizens.
Trump is seeking to appeal to Republican voters on the right wing of his party who support a crackdown on immigration. As president, Trump pursued hard-line immigration policies and took steps toward building a wall along the US-Mexico border, which he promised as a candidate in 2016.
Republicans have criticized Biden for rolling back the hardline policies of Republican former President Donald Trump.
Biden's new regulation restricting asylum access at the border resembles similar measures implemented under Trump that were blocked by US courts. The move also counters previous statements Biden made in 2020 on the campaign trail, saying he thought it was "wrong" for people not to be able to seek asylum on American soil.
Some Democrats and immigration advocates have said the regulation undercuts the ability to seek asylum at US borders as required by US law and international agreements. The American Civil Liberties Union has already signaled it will sue over the Biden policy.
On the other side of the ideological spectrum, a coalition of 22 Republican state attorney generals separately opposed the measure, saying that it is "riddled with exceptions."
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