The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a lawsuit regarding the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict the right to birthright citizenship. If the Supreme Court rules in Trump’s favor, then children born in the US would be denied citizenship if their parents are undocumented or residing in the country under temporary legal status.
Let’s not mince words here: Trump’s executive order is cruel and xenophobic. Children born of undocumented immigrants or visa holders have committed no crimes. They are not responsible for the circumstances of their birth. There is also no legitimate legal basis. The 14th Amendment is clear:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
None of these facts matter to Trump. His administration would readily tear families apart and see children born into a second-class status simply because their births were not to his liking.
This is only the beginning of the cruelty that his birthright ban would unleash. If the Supreme Court rules in his favor, it would pave the way for any president (or wannabe monarch) to redefine citizenship at their discretion. After all, if simply being born in the US is not enough to guarantee citizenship, then what is? Where do we draw the line?
Well, if you’re Trump, then it’s the color line. For the Trump administration, not all babies are created equal. Restricting birthright citizenship is their way of preventing “hundreds of thousands of unqualified people” from acquiring the “privilege of American citizenship.” It is about dissuading the wrong kinds of people from having the wrong kinds of babies.
Sound far-fetched? Well, consider this: Trump, the self-proclaimed “fertilization president” (gross!), has sought to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). As Trump puts it, we want “beautiful babies in this country, we want you to have your beautiful, beautiful, perfect baby. We want those babies, and we need them.”
Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, champions the future of “Trump babies.” Vice President JD Vance literally says he wants “more babies in the United States of America.” The Trump White House insists that they need “growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.”
But, if that’s true, then what is the purpose of Trump’s executive order? If they want more babies to be born in this country, then why push to deny babies their legitimate birthright? It’s because Trump is pro-baby so long as it’s the right kind of baby.
Beautiful, healthy, strong and perfect — those are the babies Trump wants. And those are the babies that, in his view, migrants do not have.
Trump has explicitly said that migrants have “bad genes” that cause them to commit crimes. That they are “not humans, they’re animals.” He has said that migrants from South America, Africa, and Asia are “poisoning the blood of our country” — a view that parallels Hitler’s rhetoric about “blood poisoning” and race mixing. Trump calls Somalis “garbage” and says that “I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you … their country is no good for a reason.”
He believes this about migrants, and he believes it extends to their children. This pseudoscientific eugenic drivel is at the core of his executive order.
That is the real danger of Trump’s birthright ban. As it stands, birthright citizenship provides a clear-cut metric. Aside from two niche exceptions, if you were born here, you are from here. There’s no loophole to exploit. There’s no definition to reevaluate and abuse. There’s no place for prejudice, discrimination, or bigoted understandings of what it means to be an American. There’s no ambiguity regarding who belongs. The simplicity of birthright is precisely its strength.
It’s also precisely why the Trump administration wants to undo it. Birthright citizenship is a strong barrier against the administration’s most fascist impulses to recreate “the meaning and value of American citizenship.” As he said on the campaign trail, “If I win, the American people will be the rulers of this country again. The United States is now an occupied country.” His current administration similarly claims that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” if it does not restrict migration and preserve its “Western identity.”
If Trump’s mission is, as he explicitly says, to liberate the US and protect Western values threatened by migration, then he won’t stop with the children of undocumented immigrants. Trump cannot be allowed to define who is a citizen. For the good of the nation and for future generations, we cannot let him succeed.
- Jordan Liz is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at San José State University. He specializes in issues of race, immigration and the politics of belonging.
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