A US federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a new executive order limiting who qualifies for birthright citizenship.
The move thwarts President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to restrict the constitutional right, which comes after the US Supreme Court rejected his previous effort.
US District Judge Deborah Boardman of Maryland issued a preliminary injunction following an appeal by rights groups who challenged Trump’s executive order from August 6 targeting what he termed “birth tourism.”
“The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth’,” Boardman wrote in her 35-page ruling, adding the president’s August order “is almost certainly unconstitutional.”
Immigrant rights groups cheered the decision.
“When it comes to attacking birthright citizenship, the Trump administration has lost before this court, lost before the Supreme Court, and lost again today,” said Shana Khader, Legal Director at We Are CASA, a Maryland-based group.
Trump’s fresh executive order was aimed at those who he alleges enter the country under the guise of tourism while actually intending to give birth.
In his first executive order on the issue, Trump said that children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become US citizens.
Lower courts blocked that move, ruling that under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, nearly everyone born on US soil is an American citizen. The Supreme Court agreed.
The president’s efforts to curb birthright citizenship are part of his wider campaign to limit immigration, which includes expelling millions of undocumented migrants and removing deportation protections from nationals of more than a dozen countries.
