The president-elect said he’d end birthright citizenship via executive action, but an 1898 Supreme Court ruling may block the move.
President-elect Donald Trump vowed on Sunday to end birthright citizenship through executive action. However, legal experts say the plan faces a formidable obstacle—a U.S. Supreme Court precedent for more than 120 years.
In Sunday’s interview on NBC News’ Meet the Press with host Kristen Welker, Trump outlined drastic sweeping changes to immigration policy, including plans for mass deportations and ending automatic citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants in the United States.
“We’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous”, Trump said. When pressed by Welker about using executive action to do it, the president-elect responded: “Well, if we can, through executive action.”
Trump also incorrectly said that the U.S. is the only country that has birthright citizenship. “Do you know we’re the only country in the world that has it?” Trump repeatedly emphasized to Welker. However, according to the Library of Congress, more than 30 nations, including Canada and Brazil, provide similar constitutional protections.
The constitutional right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil stems from the 14th Amendment and was affirmed by the Court in the landmark 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark. The Court ruled that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was entitled to citizenship, establishing a precedent that has guided immigration law ever since.
When Welker asked Trump about inevitable legal challenges, he pivoted to discussing the current immigration system and said, “We’re into litigation that lasts for years. Costs us hundreds of billions of dollars.'”
In an interview last month with San Francisco radio station KQED, University of California, Berkeley law professor Leti Volpp emphasized this precedent’s durability and said, “We have a legal system which is based on precedent. In the case of Wong Kim Ark.there has been no chipping away at precedent through other decisions.
