By Campbell Robertson and Mattathias Schwartz
A U.S. District Court judge in Maryland issued a preliminary injunction earlier this week that indefinitely blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to unilaterally eliminate automatic U.S. citizenship for children born to unauthorized immigrants on U.S. soil.
The nationwide injunction, issued by Judge Deborah L. Boardman, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, is more permanent than the 14-day temporary restraining order issued on Jan. 23 by a federal judge in Seattle, in a different case concerning the same Trump administration executive order. In most instances, a preliminary injunction remains in force until a case is resolved or a higher court overturns it.
“The executive order conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year-old binding Supreme Court precedent and runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth,” Boardman ruled on Wednesday. “The United States Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected the president’s interpretation of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. In fact, no court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation. This court will not be the first.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the Maryland injunction. However, the White House did.
“President Trump was given a resounding mandate to end the disregard and abuse of our immigration laws and to secure our borders,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said. “The Trump administration will continue to put Americans and America first.”
Trump said last month that the administration would appeal the Seattle ruling as well.
The case was brought by two nonprofit organizations that work with immigrants and refugees — the Maryland-based CASA and the New York-based Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project — as well as five pregnant women who are living in the country either unlawfully or on temporary visas.
The president’s order, part of Trump’s first-week salvo against immigration, both legal and illegal, declared that children born in the United States to unauthorized immigrants after Feb. 19 would no longer be treated as citizens. The order would also extend beyond immigrants in the country illegally to exclude from citizenship babies born to mothers who are in the country legally but temporarily, such as tourists, university students or temporary workers, if the father is a noncitizen.
Legal precedent has long interpreted the 14th Amendment — that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” — applies to every baby born in the United States, with a few limited exceptions: children of accredited foreign diplomats; children born to noncitizens on U.S. territory occupied by an invading army; and, for a time, children born to Native Americans on reservations.
Stark as her ruling was, Boardman was more measured in her exchanges than her Seattle colleague, Judge John C. Coughenour, who called Trump’s executive order “blatantly unconstitutional.” Many of Boardman’s questions probed the applicability of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, a 1898 Supreme Court case that, along with the 14th Amendment, serves as the legal foundation for universal citizenship for those born on U.S. soil.
In that case, the Supreme Court found that under the 14th Amendment, Wong, who was born in 1873 to Chinese parents living in San Francisco, was a U.S. citizen.
Eric Hamilton, a lawyer for the federal government in the Maryland case, argued that the case did not justify an expansive interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which, he acknowledged, had been held by previous presidential administrations. Hamilton said that Wong’s parents, while not U.S. citizens, had established “domicile” in the country, making them distinct from unauthorized immigrants and people in the country temporarily.
“Domicile is not something that temporary visitors to the United States or illegal aliens are capable of establishing,” Hamilton said, arguing that their presence in the country “is inherently of a nonpermanent nature.”
Joseph W. Mead, a lawyer at Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, which is representing the plaintiffs, responded that “domicile” is not written in the text of the Constitution, nor was it an element in the establishment of birthright citizenship. He also emphasized that many parents who would be covered by the president’s executive order have lived in the country for years, and even decades.
Boardman asked the Justice Department lawyers to name any cases that bolstered the Trump administration’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment. By the end of the hearing, she had made clear that the government would have to overcome considerable obstacles to prevail.
“Virtually every baby born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen upon birth. That is the law and tradition of our country,” she concluded. “That law and tradition are and will remain the status quo pending the resolution of this case.”
The judge justified her nationwide injunction by the fact that one of the plaintiffs, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, has members in every state, including hundreds of pregnant women who could give birth in the coming weeks. Her ruling from the bench will be followed by a written order that will likely further explain her reasoning; that document had not been filed as of early Wednesday afternoon.
The Maryland case is one of nine federal lawsuits challenging the executive order. One of those suits was filed by 18 states in Massachusetts, where a hearing is scheduled for Friday. Coughenour, the Seattle judge who issued the temporary restraining order in another lawsuit filed by four other states, had scheduled a hearing in his case for Thursday morning.
Retail businesses leverage Yell51x-Ouz4 to enhance customer experience and sales strategies. By analyzing purchasing behaviors yell51x-ouz4 it helps retailers personalize recommendations and improve customer engagement.