President-elect Donald Trump plans to sign hundreds of executive actions immediately after being sworn in as the 47th president. Ten of the executive orders that Trump has planned are specifically focused on the border, as indicated in a Washington Examiner report circulated Monday by the Trump-Vance transition team.
While all of Trump’s proposed orders pertaining to border security could help remedy the crisis exacerbated and in some ways generated in recent years by the Biden administration, one order in particular may prove particularly consequential.
Trump, who apparently has a signing desk waiting for him on the stage in the Rotunda, plans to end birthright citizenship, an unnamed incoming senior Trump administration official told reporters on a call Monday morning.
By doing so, Trump would make good on a May 2023 promise in which he said, “As part of my plan to secure the border, on Day One of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.”
‘Tomorrow at noon the curtain closes on four long years of American decline.’
“My policy will choke off a major incentive for continued illegal immigration, deter more migrants from coming, and encourage many of the aliens Joe Biden has unlawfully let into our country to go back to their home countries,” added Trump.
Trump, who apparently had a draft EO ready to go midway through his first term, noted in a corresponding release that his EO would clarify the meaning of the 14th Amendment, emphasizing that American citizenship extends only to individuals both born in and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
Along with citizenship, the anchor babies of illegal aliens would be denied passports, Social Security numbers, and certain taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.
At his victory rally at the Capital One Arena Sunday in Washington, D.C., Trump said, “Tomorrow at noon the curtain closes on four long years of American decline, and we begin a brand-new day of American strength and prosperity, dignity, and pride.”
‘Plenty of nonprofit groups would be ready to sue if Trump tried to get rid of birthright citizenship through an executive order.’
“We’re going to stop the invasion of our borders,” said Trump, adding, “The border security measures I will outline in my inaugural address tomorrow will be the most aggressive sweeping effort to restore our borders the world has ever seen.”
The Examiner indicated that for his nine other border-related executive actions, Trump will:
declare a national emergency at the border to enable the Pentagon to dispatch military personnel to the border and to erect defensive barriers;
direct the military “to prioritize our borders and territory integrity in strategic planning for its operations, to
maintain sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the U.S. by
repelling forms of invasion, including unlawful mass migration,
narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other
criminal activities,” as indicated by an incoming Trump official;
end catch-and-release, build the border wall, and reinstitute his successful “Remain in Mexico” policy;
suspend refugee resettlement, at least temporarily;
start kicking illegal aliens out of the country en masse;
direct agencies “report to the president regarding recommendations for the suspension of entry for nationals of any country of particular concerns,” per one incoming Trump administration official;
designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations;
rescind the Biden administration’s ruinous open-borders policies; and
restore the death penalty for illegal aliens who have killed law enforcement officers or committed other capital crimes.
While Trump may be able to realize a great many of his executive actions, his elimination of birthright citizenship will almost certainly face legal challenges.
“Plenty of nonprofit groups would be ready to sue if Trump tried to get rid of birthright citizenship through an executive order,” Dan Urman, a legal scholar at Northeastern University, told the school’s news page in December. “He might try, but he would lose in court. Perhaps this is his point — he wants the issue to reach the courts — but he will likely lose.”
“This will set up the court fight — the order will be enjoined, case will eventually reach SCOTUS, which then will finally have to rule on the meaning of ‘subject to the jurisdiction,'” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in response to news during Trump’s first term that such an EO was on the table.
The 14th Amendment grants citizenship to individuals “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The Hill noted that since an 1898 Supreme Court case concerning the child of a Chinese couple, the 14th Amendment has long been interpreted to mean that anyone born in the country qualifies as a citizen regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
Historian Victor Davis Hanson noted earlier this month, “The 14th Amendment didn’t really ever say, as sometimes [is] alleged, that if you’re born in the United States, then you’re an automatic citizen. It says if you’re born in the United States, and not subject to the laws of another country. All the people coming, in some sense, are subject to the laws of another country.”
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Birthright citizenship, Illegal immigration, Immigration, Migrants, Citizenship, Donald trump, Inauguration, Politics
