‘Likely unconstitutional’: US judge partially halts Trump’s latest birthright citizenship order
“Trump v/s Barbara (the SC order) is the law of the land. The President must follow it,” the order added.
A US district judge in Maryland has blocked President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, saying the executive order (EO) cannot be enforced against children whose citizenship rights have already been recognised by the Supreme Court (SC) earlier.
Because government agencies had not yet issued detailed guidance on how the order would be implemented, the judge also rejected the Trump administration’s argument that the case was premature.
Judge Boardman, however, said the question before her was narrower than whether every provision of the EO issued in August was unconstitutional. She ruled that applying the executive order to the certified class was “almost certainly unconstitutional” because the Supreme Court had already determined that these children are citizens at birth. Trump’s EO issued last month, in August , had sought to create several categories in which federal agencies would not bestow citizenship to US-born children. These included cases where a parent was designated an ‘alien enemy’, worked for a foreign government or international organisation, or had engaged in a commercial transaction or fraud linked to obtaining birthright citizenship. This executive order was projected as a crackdown on birth-tourism. She emphasised that loss of citizenship, even temporarily, could have cascading consequences and that the balance of equities and public interest favoured preventing confusion and upheaval. The ruling is another setback for the Trump administration’s effort to narrow birthright citizenship. But immigration attorneys point out that it leaves open the possibility of further litigation over the scope of the executive order issued in August.