A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday blocked US President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing an executive order restricting the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, prompted by four Democratic-led states, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, which the Republican president signed on Monday during his first day in office.
“This is [a] blatantly 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 Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, calling it a flagrant violation of the U.S. Constitution.
“Under this order, babies born today do not count as American citizens,” Washington Deputy Attorney General Lane Polozola told U.S. District Judge John Coughenour at the beginning of a hearing in Seattle.
Polozola, on behalf of the Democratic 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.
The challengers argue that Trump’s action violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which establishes that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
Trump in his executive order ordered US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor their father are US citizens or legal permanent residents.
In a brief filed Wednesday night, the U.S. Department of Justice 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 has moved more quickly than the other four cases filed under the executive order. He has been assigned to Coughenour, an appointee of former Republican President Ronald Reagan.
The judge could potentially rule from the bench after hearing arguments, or could wait to write a decision before Trump’s order takes effect.
Under the order, any children born after February 19 whose mothers or fathers are not citizens or legal permanent residents would be subject to deportation and would be prevented from obtaining Social Security numbers, various government benefits and the ability to work legally as they grow older. .
According to Democratic-led states, more than 150,000 newborn children would be denied citizenship annually if Trump’s order is allowed to stand.
Democratic state attorneys general have said that understanding of the Constitution’s citizenship clause was cemented 127 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court held that children born in the United States to noncitizen parents are entitled to U.S. citizenship.
The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 after the Civil War and overturned the Supreme Court’s famous 1857 Dred Scott decision that had declared that the Constitution’s protections did not apply to enslaved blacks.
But the Justice Department in its brief argued that the 14th Amendment had never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born in the country and that the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark referred only to children of permanent residents.
The Justice Department said the four states’ case also “clears multiple hurdles.” The department said only individuals, not states, can bring claims under the citizenship clause and that states lack the legal standing to sue over Trump’s order.
Thirty-six of Trump’s Republican allies in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday separately introduced legislation to restrict automatic citizenship to only children born to citizens or legal permanent residents.
