Donald Trump just hit another wall in his fight against birthright citizenship, and this time, the judge didn’t hold back. A federal court blocked Trump’s latest executive order targeting the constitutional right after the Supreme Court already shut down his first attempt.
Judge blocks Donald Trump’s latest effort to roll back birthright citizenship
A U.S. federal judge in Maryland blocked President Donald Trump’s latest effort to roll back birthright citizenship, Al Jazeera reported. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday against Trump’s new executive order from August 6. The ruling follows a 6-3 Supreme Court decision that found Trump’s previous attempt violated the Constitution.
Trump’s new order targeted what he has called “birth tourism.” It sought to deny citizenship to children of foreign nationals in certain categories. These included individuals accused of engaging in commercial transactions to obtain citizenship.
Boardman ruled the order unconstitutional for the same reason Trump’s prior effort failed. She cited the Supreme Court’s June decision in Barbara v Trump. “This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them,” she wrote.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment protects birthright citizenship. Courts have upheld this constitutional basis in several cases, most notably in US v Wong Kim Ark. That case involved an American man born to Chinese parents.
Trump campaigned for a second term on a pledge to crack down on immigration. He and his allies have argued that children of undocumented immigrants do not qualify for birthright citizenship. They claim such children do not fall under the “jurisdiction” of the United States.
Immigrant rights advocates and families brought Wednesday’s legal challenge. Groups like the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project had previously won an injunction from Boardman last year. “The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth,'” Boardman wrote in Wednesday’s decision.
Originally reported by Vritti Johar on Mandatory.com.
