Trump attends Supreme Court debates regarding revocation of birthright citizenship

On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court will discuss a central issue in American identity related to birthright citizenship, a right that US President Donald Trump wants to abolish, as he intends to attend the hearings in the name of his war against illegal immigration.

During his second term, Trump signed an executive order stating that children born to parents residing in the United States illegally or on temporary visas will not automatically become American citizens.

Lower courts overturned this decision as unconstitutional, ruling that under the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, anyone born on American soil is considered an American citizen.

The amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”

This does not apply to people not subject to US jurisdiction, such as foreign diplomats and Native American tribes.

In response to a question on Tuesday about the Supreme Court hearing, Trump told reporters, “I will attend.”

Trump attended the inauguration ceremony of his first nominee for Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, in 2017, months after the start of his first term.

But the presence of a sitting president at oral arguments in a case currently affecting his administration is considered an exceptional event.

The Trump administration says that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was approved after the American Civil War (1861-1865), concerns the citizenship rights of freed slaves, and not the children of illegal immigrants or temporary visitors.

Trump’s executive order is based on the idea that anyone who is in the United States illegally or on a visa is not subject to state jurisdiction and is therefore automatically excluded from citizenship.

The Supreme Court rejected this narrow definition in an 1898 case involving a man named Wong Kim Arc, who was born in San Francisco in 1873 to parents who had immigrated to the United States from China.

After a visit to China, Wong Kim Arc was banned from entering the United States in 1895 under the Chinese Exclusion Laws.

However, the Supreme Court ruled that he was an American citizen by virtue of his birth in the United States.

History and traditions
University of Illinois at Chicago law professor Stephen Schoen said the court would likely reject the challenge to birthright citizenship.

“This is a court that has always relied on history and tradition as a basic reference in understanding the constitution,” Schoen told Agence France-Presse. “It would be somewhat surprising to discover, after 150 years, that we were applying the citizenship clause completely incorrectly.”

Conservatives have an overwhelming majority on the Supreme Court (6-3). Trump appointed three of its judges.

John Sawyer, Trump’s attorney general, said that to be eligible for citizenship, a person “must be born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction.”

“Children of temporary or illegal resident aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States,” Sawyer added in a court filing.

“No person shall be subject to the “jurisdiction” of the United States unless he owes it sufficient loyalty and has the right to claim its protection.”

Sawyer said that automatically granting citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants is a “strong incentive for illegal immigration,” considering that this encourages what is called “birth tourism.”

If the Supreme Court refuses to revoke birthright citizenship, this will be the second major loss for Trump during this term, after the justices invalidated most of his tariffs in February.

Trump responded angrily to this ruling, calling birthright citizenship “one of the biggest frauds of our time” on Tuesday, a day after he posted on Truth Social criticizing “stupid judges.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which defends birthright citizenship before the court, said the Trump administration “demands nothing less than a rewriting of the constitutional foundations of our nation.”

He added, “The government’s false arguments, if accepted, will cast a shadow over the citizenship of millions of Americans, for generations.”

A decision in the case is expected by late June or early July.