22 states and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed lawsuits to block President Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship.
The executive order would impact hundreds of thousands of immigrants and asylum-seekers. The first case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and its New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts affiliates. Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, that every baby born in the United States is a U.S. citizen.
Cody Wofsy is deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney in the case.
"Birthright citizenship is the principle that everyone born in this country is a United States citizen, regardless of their parentage and their parents immigration status, among other things," Wofsy said. "It's an ancient principle. It goes back to common law in England and is codified in 14th amendment citizenship clause, which specifically provides for birthright citizenship. What the order does, is [it] purports to deny citizenship to babies born starting 30 days from the date of the order, who lack a parent who's either a U.S. citizen or has some kind of permanent immigration status. What that means is that the Trump administration is going to be ripping away citizenship from babies. It's an incredibly cruel and illegal and unconstitutional action."
Wofsy cited a young Indonesian couple living in New Hampshire who applied for asylum shortly after arriving in the U.S. in 2023. He says their child could be denied basic health care and nutrition if the mother, now in her third trimester, gives birth after February 19th.
Closer to home, Tim Doherty with Albany's West Hill Refugee Center says the big concern among the people he serves is deportation. Doherty says the concept of "anchor babies," where individuals may exploit the system to avoid being deported by having children in the U.S., is a valid concern.
"You know, people have kids, and so it gets them a firmer foothold, and with the assumption that they're not going to be deported if they've got an American born citizen. So there's those kinds of things, and it's all, whether it's good or bad or illegal. I don't know," Doherty said.
Local law enforcement agencies are also facing the battle over immigration policy, with some announcing they won’t work with the federal administration to implement a crackdown on undocumented residents. The Rensselaer County Sheriff's office is the only such office in the state that participates in the 287(g) program, where local law enforcement agencies collaborate with the federal government including Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws. It tells WAMC nothing has changed.
Bryan MacCormack of the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement says there's an increased fear among the undocumented, with many reports of ICE sightings, though none have been verified. He says the community is uneasy.
"So we have folks who are undocumented and their children were born here, we have folks who come from mixed status families where one parent may be a citizen and the other parent is not," MacCormack said. "And so there's just a lot of questions about what is going to happen to parents and their children? Unfortunately, at this time, we don't have a lot of good answers for them, and usually it's a case by case basis. But we are very thankful that our legal allies at the ACLU as well as Attorney Generals across the country are going to rise to the occasion in the same way they did under the first Trump administration."
Harold Solis with the progressive grassroots immigrant-led organization “Make the Road New York” argues that President Trump can’t overrule the Constitution.
"If a president can unilaterally restrict birthright citizenship today, what constitutional rights and who else's citizenship might be reinterpreted away tomorrow? It's not just about immigration. It's about whether we will allow one person to override constitutional guarantees that have protected Americans for generations. And legalities aside, I just want to be crystal clear, the human cost of this order would be devastating. It would create a permanent underclass of American-born individuals who would be stateless, born here, but citizens nowhere," said Holis.
Wofsy says how multiple lawsuits, including the ACLU's, will make their way through the courts will vary.
"Our case is filed in New Hampshire, and there's no other cases there, and we don't expect it to be consolidated with any other cases. But you know, each case may sort of take its own, its own path. In terms of the timing, it's always difficult to know how judges will handle these kinds of issues, and it may depend on the judge, but you know, in our view, this is such an important issue, and again, the consequences are so devastating, that we certainly hope and expect that these cases will move quickly and that we will be able to obtain an injunction,” Wofsy said.
With the changing political climate MacCormack says the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement is now on “red alert.”
"We have been getting increased threats to our organization, our individual staff, including phone calls and emails, and so we decided to remove the photos and contact information for our staff from the website. And it's not something that we'll necessarily do permanently, but is an interim security measure," said MacCormack.
Activists urge people who expect to be impacted by Trump’s executive order to maintain accurate documentation of their immigration status, and speak with an attorney if possible.
