The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“Donald Trump has spent the past decade of his political career treating undocumented immigrants as the great modern American crisis — but he’s still working hard to create more.
“In January, on the first day of his second term in office, the president signed an executive order that states that only people born to at least one parent with citizenship status or legal permanent residency are legal citizens, an order that flies directly in the face of the 14th Amendment right to citizenship by birth. The federal government was promptly sued by different groups, including a coalition of states, and the proposed order has been subject to nationwide injunctions. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday in a case that could decide whether federal judges have the power to issue nationwide injunctions and, subsequently, whether the restrictions to citizenship could go into effect.
“But the conservative justices seemed skeptical. It leaves open the possibility of allowing the order to go into effect, at least in some areas, and sets the stage for many of the approximately 150,000 babies born each year to undocumented immigrants on American soil to be denied citizenship — marking a dark new chapter in American history.
“It makes sense that the Trump administration would continue its attacks on immigrants and immigrant rights: Every Trump campaign has been predicated on the notion that the country is under siege from hordes of immigrants and he’s the only one who can save us. And when he was elected for a second term, he tripled-down on his nativist instincts, vowing to conduct sweeping deportations of the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S.” — Trump Actually Wants To Make His Undocumented Immigrant ‘Crisis’ Even Worse, Nathalie Baptiste, 5/16/25 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: illegal alien advocates act as if it were some kind of sacrilege to suggest that birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens is not required by the 14th Amendment. In reality, there is nothing at all “dark” about Trump’s action. Contrary to the author of this article, the “face” of the 14th Amendment offers no endorsement of the present version of birthright citizenship. In fact, the meaning of the amendment, as seen though its origin and subsequent court rulings, is against the current interpretation.
The amendment does state that people born in the U.S. are citizens, but adds that they must be under U.S. “jurisdiction.” The framers of the amendment, and subsequent court rulings, held that jurisdiction requires allegiance to the United States. One of those framers, Senator Lyman Trumbull stated that its definition is “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.” Subsequent Supreme Court rulings, the Slaughterhouse Cases and Elk v. Wilkins upheld this interpretation. In the Elk case, the Court ruled that an American Indian, John Elk, was not a citizen, even though he was born in the U.S., because his allegiance was to his tribe rather than America.
From this perspective, illegal aliens are not under U.S. jurisdiction because their allegiance is to their home countries. Nevertheless, the advocates of birthright citizenship cite the case of Wong Kim Ark, which they claim upholds birthright citizenship for illegals.
In that ruling, the Court held that the U.S.-born son of Chinese parents was a citizen. It maintained that even though the parents were “subjects of the emperor of China,” they were under U.S. jurisdiction by having “a permanent domicile and residence in the United States.” Although this ruling seemed to diverge from the earlier precedents, it offers no definitive statement on what the status of illegal aliens might be. The parents, after all, were legal permanent residents, As Yale law professor Peter Schuck observed: “no court has ever squarely decided the question of the status under the Citizenship Clause of the native-born children of illegal and nonimmigrant aliens.”
President Trump’s executive order sets the stage for the Supreme Court to resolve the meaning of the jurisdiction clause. If it rules properly, it will end birthright citizenship for illegal aliens.