Trump vows to end birthday citizenship for children of illegal immigrants if he wins 2024 presidential race
Donald Trump has pledged that if he is re-elected as the US president in 2024, he will put an end to automatic citizenship for children of illegal immigrants born in the United States, a plan that contradicts how a 19th-century amendment to the US Constitution long has been interpreted.
Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in an increasingly crowded field, said on Tuesday in a campaign video posted on Twitter that he would issue an executive order directing federal agencies to stop what he described as birthright citizenship. Such an action by Trump will definitely face a legal challenge.
The right to citizenship stems from the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868, three years after the end of the American Civil War, which ended the slavery of blacks in the southern states, and overturned a Supreme Court ruling that had held that slaves and free Africans were not entitled to US citizenship.
The amendment granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including those formerly enslaved, and has been interpreted to mean whether or not the parents were in the country lawfully.
The proposed executive order, scheduled for the first day of Trump's second term, would require at least one parent to be a US citizen or legal permanent resident for their children to automatically become US citizens, his campaign said in a press release.
When Trump was president in 2018, he said he planned to issue an executive order to limit birthright citizenship, but never followed through. Many legal scholars at the time were skeptical that Trump could use executive power to roll back the right.
Trump on Tuesday also criticized Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent who defeated him in 2020 and is seeking re-election in 2024, over the record number of immigrants caught crossing the border illegally in recent years, calling the citizenship right for children born on US soil a "magnet". Trump noted that many countries restrict citizenship rights for non-citizens.
Trump is seeking to appeal to Republican voters on the right wing of his party who support a crackdown on immigration. As president, Trump pursued hard-line immigration policies and took steps toward building a wall along the US-Mexico border, which he promised as a candidate in 2016.
Republicans have criticized Biden for rolling back the hardline policies of Republican former President Donald Trump.
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