GREENBELT: A second federal judge has issued an order blocking Donald Trump’s administration from implementing his plan to curtail US birthright citizenship, saying no court in the United States has ever endorsed the Republican president’s interpretation of the Constitution.
During a hearing on Wednesday in Greenbelt, Maryland, US District Judge Deborah Boardman sided with two immigrant rights groups and five pregnant women who argued that their children were at risk of being denied US citizenship based on the immigration status of their parents in violation of the Constitution.
Boardman, an appointee of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s order from going into effect as planned on February 19 while the matter is litigated.
“Today, virtually every baby born on US soil is a US citizen upon birth,” Boardman said. “That is the law and tradition of our country. That law and tradition are and will remain the status quo pending the resolution of this case”.
A US Justice Department lawyer asked Boardman for 60 days to respond to the injunction, but did not say whether the Trump administration would appeal.
Boardman’s order provides longer-term relief to opponents of Trump’s policy than an earlier, 14-day pause imposed on January 23 by a Seattle-based federal judge.
That judge, John Coughenour, called Trump’s order “blatantly unconstitutional”. Coughenour is set on Thursday to consider whether to likewise issue a preliminary injunction that would remain in effect pending the resolution of the litigation.
Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day back in office on January 20, had directed US agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident. It is part of Trump’s hardline policies toward immigration that he has pursued since returning to power.
Lawyers for the immigrant rights groups CASA and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project that brought the case before Boardman have argued that Trump’s order violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
Boardman said at the hearing that Trump’s interpretation of the Constitution has been “resoundingly rejected” by the Supreme Court in the past.
“In fact, no court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation,” Boardman said. “This court will not be the first”.
The Maryland lawsuit is one of at least eight filed around the United States by Democratic state attorneys general, immigrants rights advocates and expectant mothers challenging Trump’s order.
Under Trump’s order, any children born in the United States after February 19 whose mother and father are not American citizens or lawful permanent residents would be subject to deportation and would be prevented from obtaining Social Security numbers, various government benefits and the ability to work lawfully when they get older.
