A pregnant woman living in Massachusetts with temporary protected status is expected to give birth in March. But under the terms of Donald Trump’s executive order that unilaterally redefines the Constitution, upending federal law and decades of established Supreme Court precedent, her baby will not be a citizen.
She is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the newly inaugurated president and members of his administration, accused of mounting a “flagrantly illegal” attempt to “strip citizenship from millions of Americans with a stroke of a pen.”
The lawsuit was filed by Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights on behalf of Brazilian Worker Center and La Colaborativa, which have “numerous members who are either currently pregnant or planning to grow their families in the future, and whose children will be among the targeted citizens,” according to the complaint.
The lawsuit is among at least two federal complaints filed by several immigrants’ advocacy organizations and civil rights groups on behalf of immigrant families and expectant mothers who flooded the groups with complaints and fears over what will happen to their families.
Eighteen state attorneys general and officials in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco also sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to block the president’s “flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage.”
“Our constitution is not open to reinterpretation by executive order or presidential decree,” New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Tuesday.
Trump and administration officials were also sued by Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington.
“More than 12,000 babies born in the United States each month who are entitled to citizenship — including more than 1,100 babies born each month in the Plaintiff States — will no longer be considered United States citizens” and “will be left with no immigration status” under Trump’s order, according to the complaint.
Plaintiffs are demanding the courts to immediately hit pause on Trump’s order, which revives a once-fringe right-wing legal effort to get a conservative-majority Supreme Court to redefine the 14th Amendment.
Another lawsuit from New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support, Make the Road New York, and the League of United Latin American Citizens accuses the Trump administration of “straightforwardly” violating the Constitution with an attempt to “upend one of the most fundamental American constitutional values.”
Stripping citizenship from immigrant children threatens them “with a lifetime of exclusion from society and fear of deportation from the only country they have ever known,” according to the complaint. “But that is illegal. The Constitution and Congress — not President Trump — dictate who is entitled to full membership in American society.”
Trump’s order, among the first signed by the president in his first hours in office, attempts to revoke citizenship for children born in the United States under two sweeping conditions.
Under the order’s terms, children can be denied citizenship “when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth,” or “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause 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.”
The Supreme Court affirmed the principle in 1898, clarifying that children born in the United States to immigrant parents are citizens, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
The 14th Amendment was “specifically enshrined” to “ensure that no one — not even the President — could deny children born in America their rightful place as citizens,” according to the complaint from New Hampshire plaintiffs.
The order’s impact will be “overwhelming and devastating,” Boston plaintiffs wrote.
If allowed to go into effect, “American citizens would be denied passports, leaving them unable to travel outside the country for fear of never being allowed re-entry; denied Social Security numbers and cards, hampering their ability to work without government permission; and prevented from exercising countless federal rights, protections, benefits, and entitlements that derive from U.S. citizenship,” they argued.
The order not only violates the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause but treads on the Fifth Amendment by treating people born in the United States “as a subordinate caste of native-born Americans” who are “entitled to fewer rights, benefits, and entitlements” than other citizens, they wrote.
“This executive order is a brutal and unconstitutional attempt to redefine what it means to be an American,” according to Lawyers for Civil Rights executive director Iván Espinoza-Madrigal.
“The Constitution is clear: birthplace, not parentage, determines citizenship in this country,” he added.
“Our members are mothers, fathers, workers, and neighbors who came to this country searching for a safer and better life,” La Colaborativa executive director Gladys Vega said in a statement. “Denying citizenship to their U.S.-born children undermines the ideals of fairness and opportunity that define America. We will not stand idly by while our children are targeted and their rights and dignity are erased.”
