US Supreme Court Blocks Trump's Bid to End Automatic Birthright Citizenship

One of Donald Trump’s initial moves in his second term was an attempt to reinterpret the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Among a flurry of executive orders, Trump sought to end the principle of automatic citizenship for anyone born in the US, a rule that has been in place since 1868. However, that ambition was thwarted on Tuesday (30/06) after the US Supreme Court issued a ruling not in favour of the government. “This is one of the clearest statements about who we are as a nation,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement. “No matter who your parents are, if you are born here, you are entitled to be part of this country.” Trump had previously called the current policy a “disgrace”, while his vice president, JD Vance, once described it as “the dumbest immigration policy in the world.” The executive order had already undergone a tortuous legal process in various courts, including the Supreme Court. Although Tuesday’s ruling did not change the legal status, according to Kim Lane Scheppele, the issue still leaves an impact. “The fact that this issue is now open for debate, when it never was before, makes citizenship status more fragile, including for those who have lived their entire lives in the US,” the Princeton professor of Sociology and International Affairs and legal sociology expert told DW shortly before the ruling was announced. “Keep in mind, citizenship status is being attacked in various ways by Trump. His administration has opened a denaturalisation unit in the Department of Justice and pushed for proof of citizenship to vote. Yet very few of us have such proof. For example, less than half of US citizens have a passport.” The 14th Amendment 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.” Courts and the government have consistently interpreted this provision to mean that a child born in the US is automatically a citizen, regardless of the parents’ immigration status. There are some specific exceptions to this general rule, including children born to foreign diplomats or to enemy forces in hostile occupation. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 255,000 children are born in the US each year to non-citizen parents. Any change would not be applied retroactively, meaning anyone who had previously qualified for citizenship by being born in the US would remain unaffected. According to Pew Research Center research, that number reached up to 4.4 million Americans just in the period from 2006 to 2023, though some of them may have since left the country or died. Several prominent American figures obtained US citizenship by birth even though their parents were not citizens at the time, including many in Trump’s inner circle, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, FBI Director Kash Patel, and the wife of the Vice President, Usha Vance. Although the courts have now decided there will be no change, the Trump administration’s proposal, if implemented, would have significantly altered how citizenship is determined at birth. It is difficult to know precisely, but the Trump administration indicated that when a child is born, the parents’ status would be checked to determine the child’s eligibility for citizenship and other essential documents. Under such a rule, a birth certificate alone would no longer be sufficient to obtain a passport or a social security number. A child’s citizenship status would then heavily depend on the parents’ country of origin. Some countries do not automatically grant citizenship to children of their nationals born abroad, particularly in Southeast Asia. In such cases, the child would likely become stateless. “One important thing to understand about the US is that we have no simple, accessible way to prove citizenship, precisely because most of us rely on birthright status for that claim,” Scheppele said. “So women who have just given birth, let alone the fathers of newborn babies, will not immediately have an easy way to prove their citizenship, even in the most ordinary of birth cases. Imagine if the citizenship and immigration status of all new parents had to be recorded for every birth across the country. From that alone, you can begin to see the administrative chaos that would ensue.” Trump has often falsely claimed the US is “the only country that has it”. In fact, data compiled by Pew Research Center shows that 32 other countries, mostly in North and Latin America, also offer automatic citizenship to children born on their territory. Trump previously described automatic birthright citizenship as a “magnet for illegal immigration” that he claimed unfairly allows foreign nationals to access benefits and facilities in the US. The failure to push one of his flagship immigration policies through the courts will clearly infuriate Trump. The ability to drive hardline immigration policies is key to fulfilling his promises, which heavily emphasised mass deportations of “illegal aliens”, restrictions on refugee arrivals, and the success of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.