A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday blocked US President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing an executive order ending automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, calling it “plainly unconstitutional.”
U.S. District Judge John Cognore issued a temporary restraining order at the urging of four Democratic-led states that prevents the administration from implementing the order, which the Republican president signed on Monday during his first day in office. .
“It is [a] A clearly unconstitutional order,” the judge told a US Justice Department lawyer defending Trump’s order.
The order has already been the subject of five lawsuits by civil rights groups and 22 state Democratic attorneys general, who call it a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution.
“Under this order, children born today will not be considered American citizens,” Washington Assistant Attorney General Lynn Polozola told Senior U.S. District Judge John Cognore at the start of the hearing in Seattle.
Polozola — representing the Democratic state attorneys general of Washington state, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — urged the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the administration from carrying out this key element of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Do it.
Challengers argue that Trump’s move violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
In his executive order, Trump directed U.S. agencies to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. if both parents are not U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
In a brief filed late Wednesday, the US Justice Department called the order “an integral part” of the president’s efforts to “address this nation’s broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border.”
The lawsuit filed in Seattle is moving faster than four other cases brought on the executive order. It is assigned to Cognore, an appointee of Republican former President Ronald Reagan.
The judge could likely rule from the bench after hearing arguments, or he could wait to write a decision before Trump’s order takes effect.
Under the order, any children born after Feb. 19 to mothers or fathers who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents will be subject to deportation and will be denied Social Security numbers, various government benefits and Being of legal working age will also prevent eligibility.
According to Democratic-led states, if Trump’s order is allowed to stand, more than 150,000 newborns will be denied citizenship annually.
The Democratic state’s attorney general has said that the Constitution’s understanding of the citizenship clause was strengthened 127 years ago when the US Supreme Court ruled that children born in the US to non-citizen parents are entitled to US citizenship.
After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 and overturned the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which declared that the Constitution’s protections did not apply to black people.
But the Justice Department argued in its brief that the 14th Amendment had never been interpreted to grant universal citizenship to anyone born in the country and that the Supreme Court’s 1898 United States v. Wong Kim Ark The decision was only relevant to children of permanent residents.
The Justice Department said the four-state lawsuit also “removes a number of threshold hurdles.” The department said only individuals, not states, can pursue claims under the citizenship clause and that states lack the legal standing to sue Trump’s order.
Thirty-six of Trump’s Republican allies in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday introduced separate legislation that would limit automatic citizenship to children born to citizens or legal permanent residents.
