Within hours of his inauguration, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order purporting to restrict citizenship by birth on US soil. Under its terms, starting next month, children born in the United States to parents who are undocumented, or whose immigration status is only temporary, would no longer come into the world as US citizens.
Trump’s order looks to remake overnight, in a narrower and meaner way, the question of what it means to be a US citizen. It would thrust untold numbers of newborn children into a kind of insecurity they do not know today. The children would no longer receive federal identity documents, which would likely create daunting challenges in accessing essential health care, nutrition programs, and school enrolment.
Down the line, the lack of US documents and resulting fear could be weaponized in the labor market, resulting in suppressed wages and poorer work conditions; employment opportunities will be curtailed, and social security may be unavailable. And, of course, children would face lifelong risk of deportation from the country of their birth, often the country they call home.
This order was clearly issued without any effort to understand, let alone mitigate, these harmful consequences. It seems to be the product of malice and political calculation rather than of any affirmative vision of what US citizenship ought to mean.
Trump’s order is also ominous as an effort to deliberately narrow the scope of essential US constitutional protections. In 1868, constitutional amendments ended chattel slavery, established citizenship to newly freed Black people, and granted equal protection under the law. The Fourteenth Amendment, one of these civil rights amendments, including the Citizenship Clause, laid out principles that we’ve relied on, not always successfully, to ward off discrimination for more than a century. Backsliding on commitments to justice and equality is a dangerous policy choice.
This executive order may never come into force. The US Supreme Court has, for more than a century, interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to mean what it says: a guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States with only a few very narrow exceptions. Trump can’t wish that away. His order relies on a strained interpretation of the Amendment that may not survive the legal challenges that are already mounting.
The larger message, though, is foreboding and clear: Targeting children for harm is back on the US agenda.
