'This court will not': Judge smacks down Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship

05 February

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A federal judge in Maryland blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban birthright citizenship on Wednesday, saying the order goes against the Constitution, Supreme Court precedent, and the country’s history.

ABC News reported Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman ruled in favor of two immigrant rights groups — CASA and Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project — and five pregnant women. They argued that the women’s unborn children could be affected by the order.

"Today, virtually every baby born on U.S. soil is a U.S. 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,” Boardman said.

The order, she said, “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.”

“No court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation,” she said. “This court will not be the first.”

Trump signed the order on his first day in office, which instructs agencies to not recognize the citizenship of children who are born on U.S. soil whose parents are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

One woman who joined the lawsuit, a doctor from Venezuela, said she is worried about her child’s future. "I'm 12 weeks pregnant. I should be worried about the health of my child. I should be thinking about that primarily, and instead my husband and I are stressed, we're anxious and we're depressed about the reality that my child may not be able to become a U.S. citizen," she said.

Trump’s order is “causing real-world confusion, fear, real-world harm, for countless people today,” Joseph Mead, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said at the hearing. “This executive order is such a departure from settled law. It’s so abrupt and such as departure from what we’ve been doing for over a century.”

He added: “People covered by the executive order are parents, people who have lived here for years and decades and are not temporary visitors. They are people we work with, who own the houses down the street, who made America their home. They are entitled to have their children have the same constitutional right to citizenship as every other child born in United States has.”

Another federal judge, John Coughenour, put a temporary block on the order in January, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”

"I've been on the bench for four decades,” he said. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is. There are other times in world history where we look back and people of goodwill can say, 'Where were the judges? Where were the lawyers?'"

Click here to read ABC's report in its entirety.

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