The ruling of the United States Supreme Court linked to the citizenship of birth law caused confusion and telephone calls to lawyers, since people who could be affected tried to process a legal decision entangled with important humanitarian implications.
The conservative majority of the Court gave President Donald Trump his request to stop the power of federal judges, but did not decide the legality of his attempt to restrict citizenship of birth rights.
This result has raised more questions than answers on a right that is understood that is guaranteed under the constitution of the United States: that any person born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of citizenship or legal status of their parents.
Lorena, a 24 -year -old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and must give birth in September, above the media reports on Friday morning. He was looking for details about how his baby could be affected, but said he was confused and worried.
“There are not many details,” Lorena said, like others interviewed by Reuters He asked to be identified by his first name for fear for his safety.
“I don’t understand it well.”
He worries that his baby can end without nationality.
“I don’t know if I can give mine,” he said.
“I don’t know how I would work, if I can add it to my asylum case. I don’t want it to be drifting without nationality.”
Trump, a Republican, issued an order after assuming the position in January that ordered the US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least a father who is an American citizen or legal permanent resident.
The order was blocked by three separate judges from the United States District Court, sending the case on a road to the Supreme Court. The resulting decision said that Trump’s policy could enter into force in 30 days, but seemed to leave open the possibility of additional procedures in the lower courts that could maintain the blocked policy.
On Friday afternoon, the plaintiffs filed a lawsuit amended in a federal court in Maryland that sought to establish a class of people at the national level whose children could be denied citizens.
If they are not blocked throughout the country, the restrictions could be applied in the 28 states that did not challenge them in the Court, creating “an extremely confusing mosaic” throughout the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst at the Institute of Non-Party Migration Policy.
“Individual doctors, would individual hospitals have to try to discover how to determine the citizenship of babies and their parents?” She said.
The impulse to restrict the citizenship of birth law is part of Trump’s broader immigration repression, and has framed automatic citizenship as a magnet so that people come to give birth.
“Hundreds of thousands of people are arriving in our country under the citizenship of birth, and was not destined for that reason,” he said during a white house conference on Friday.
Worried calls
Immigration defenders and lawyers in some states led by Republicans said they received calls from a wide range of pregnant immigrants and their partners after the ruling.
They were dealing with how to explain it to customers who could be dramatically affected, given all the unknowns of how future litigation would develop or how the State would implement the Executive State.
Lynn Section, director of the Immigrant Alliance of Ohio, said she received a call on Friday from a temporary visas of East Asia with a pregnant wife. He was anxious because Ohio is not one of the demanding states and wanted to know how he could protect his son’s rights.
“I kept emphasizing that I was very interested in the rights included in the Constitution,” he said.
The defenders stressed the seriousness of Trump’s restrictions, which would block approximately 150,000 children born in the United States annually of receiving automatic citizenship.
“It really creates different kinds of people in the country with different types of rights,” said Juliana Macedo Do Nascimento, spokesman for the Immigrant Rights Organization United We Dream.
“That is really chaotic.”
By adding uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled that the members of two demanding groups in the litigation: House, an immigrant defense service in Maryland and the defense project of asylum seekers) would still be covered by blocks of the lower court in the policy.
If someone in a state in which Trump’s policy could come into force could join one of the organizations to avoid restrictions, or how state or federal officials would verify the membership, it was not clear.
Betsy, an American citizen who recently graduated from high school in Virginia and a member of the house, said his parents arrived in the United States from El Salvador two decades ago and lacked legal status when he was born.
“I feel he addresses these innocent children who have not even been born,” he said, declining to give his last name for the concerns about the safety of his family.
Navida, a Honduran asylum seeker in Louisiana, is a member of the Defense Project of Asylum seekers and recently gave birth. He heard on Friday of a friend without legal status that is pregnant and wonders about the situation under the Republican governor of Louisiana, since the State is not one of those fighting Trump’s order.
“She called me very worried and asked what will happen,” he said.
“If your child is born in Louisiana, is the baby going to be a citizen?”
