Migration advocates claim that “millions” of U.S.-born children, youths, and adults could have their citizenship cancelled if the Supreme Court allows President Donald Trump’s Executive Order barring citizenship for the new children of illegal migrants to stand.
“Thousands of American babies [born after January 20, 2025] will immediately lose their citizenship,” ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang told the nine justices on Wednesday morning. “And if you credit the government’s theory, the citizenship of millions of Americans past, present … could be called into question.”
The claim was promptly shot down by Trump’s lawyer in the courtroom, Solicitor General John Sauer. “This [January 2025] Executive Order [from Trump, denying citizenship to the children of illegals] applies only prospectively [in the future], and we ask the court to rule only prospectively,” he said.
“The logic of your position, if accepted, is that the next President, this President, or the next president, or a Congress or someone else could decide that it shouldn’t be prospective,” responded Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the leading progressive on the court. “There would be nothing limiting that, according to your theory [of the case],” she added.
“We ask the court to confine its ruling to prospective relief,” Sauer answered. “We are not asking for any retroactive relief” that would cancel citizenships already awarded, he said.
The progressives’ threat that “millions” of people could lose citizenship amid legal chaos seems intended to give swing-voting judges an excuse to kill Trump’s order that bars citizenship to illegal migrants.
The prospect of chaos was raised by a swing-voting judge. “It could be messy,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative who has voted with progressives.
“The guidance [in Trump’s Executive Order] provides, I think very, very clear, objective, viable approaches to doing this,” Sauer responded. “As a practical matter, I don’t think [the threat of chaos] is presented by this executive order.”
Legal observers said after the debate they were unable to predict what the nine-judge panel would decide by the end of July.
Each award of citizenship to foreigners’ children reduces the power and influence of Americans over their own nation.
Roughly ten percent of children born in the United States are the children of illegal migrants. Many others are the children of temporary workers. Some are the children of foreigners who either fly into the United States to give birth or are the foreign children of American surrogates who give birth in the United States.
The numbers add up over the years. “If President Trump succeeds in eliminating universal birthright citizenship, there could be 6.4 million U.S.-born children [of visa workers and migrants] without legal status by 2050, according to a new study,” the New York Times declared.
Many birthright citizenship advocates have raised the threat of cancelled citizenships as they try to deter swing-voting judges from ending the awarding of citizenship to the children of illegal migrants and visa workers.
“If the court agrees Trump’s 2025 order is constitutional, there would be nothing to stop him or any subsequent president from applying it retroactively, potentially stripping millions of people of citizenship based on their family histories,” a report in the left-wing Mother Jones magazine said.
“The rights and livelihoods of millions of people are at risk,” the article declares, adding:
“If, as the Administration argues, the Fourteenth Amendment does not make citizens of certain people, neither this Court nor the Administration has the power to create citizens of children of ineligible foreign nationals simply because they were born before issuance of the Executive Order,” a brief by three constitutional and immigration scholars warns. “In other words, a prospective-only application is not possible.”
A statement in March by FWD.us, a lobby group for wealthy West Coast investors, said:
Eliminating birthright citizenship by birth would have devastating consequences, including increasing the population of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. by 5.4 million over the next 50 years, with an average of 255,000 babies being born each year without legal status.
The investors added, “This would also mean sacrificing up to $1 trillion in economic contributions and a loss of 400,000 potential college-educated workers.”
