Eliminating birthright citizenship has been a recurring demand from conservative groups.
Photo: AFP – ALFREDO ESTRELLA
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The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an executive order this Monday that seeks to deny citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States.
The order seeks to modify the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which states that anyone born on US soil automatically obtains citizenship, regardless of the immigration status of their parents.
The measure would only apply to future births, according to a member of Trump’s team announced this Monday morning at a press conference, before the new president took office.
In practice, eliminating birthright citizenship would prevent the State Department from issuing passports to children born to undocumented parents and the Social Security Administration from recognizing them as citizens, making it difficult for them to access basic rights and the possibility of working legally in the country.
Eliminating birthright citizenship has been a recurring demand from conservative groups. Trump had already threatened to revoke this right through an executive order during his first term (2017-2021), although he never did so.
The White House has not detailed how this measure, which is expected to face legal challenges in court and which many experts consider unconstitutional, will be implemented.
To redefine birthright citizenship, the most direct route would be to propose a constitutional amendment, which would require a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as ratification by three-quarters of the states, as the historian Scott Bomboy in an analysis published by the National Constitution Center, an institution dedicated to the study of the Constitution.
There are no exact figures on the number of children born in the US to undocumented parents. According to the most recent data from the Pew Research Center, in 2022 there were approximately 1.3 million American adults whose parents lacked legal status in the country.
A 2018 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment means that children of undocumented immigrants are American citizens.
However, the study warned that the Supreme Court “has not firmly settled the issue in the modern era,” so potential legal challenges could change the current interpretation.
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