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SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order redefining birthright citizenship, calling it “manifestly unconstitutional” during the first hearing in a multi-state effort challenging the order.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour repeatedly interrupted a Justice Department lawyer during arguments to ask how he could consider the ruling constitutional. When the attorney, Brett Shumate, said he wanted a chance to explain it in a full briefing, Coughenour told him the hearing was his chance.
The temporary restraining order requested by Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington was the first to be heard before a judge and applies nationally.
The case is one of five lawsuits filed by 22 states and a number of immigrant rights groups across the country. The cases include personal testimony from state attorneys general who are U.S. citizens by birth and the naming of pregnant women who fear their children will not become U.S. citizens.
Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, opened the hearing by grilling administration lawyers, saying the order “boggles the mind.”
“This is a patently unconstitutional order,” Coughenour told Shumate. Coughenour said he has been on the bench for more than four decades and could not recall seeing another case where the challenged action was so clearly unconstitutional.
Shumate said he respectfully disagreed and asked the judge for an opportunity to get a full briefing on the merits of the case, instead of issuing a 14-day restraining order blocking its implementation.
In an argument for the states, Washington Assistant Attorney General Lane Polozola called “absurd” the government’s argument that children of parents living in the country illegally are not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”
“Aren’t they subject to the decisions of the immigration courts?” he asked. “Aren’t they supposed to follow the law while they’re here?”
He also said the restraining order was justified, in part because the executive order would immediately begin requiring states to spend millions revamping health and benefits systems to consider an applicant’s citizenship status.
“The order will affect hundreds of thousands of citizens across the country who will lose their citizenship under this new rule,” Polozola said. “Births cannot be paused while the court hears this case.”
Trump’s executive order, which he signed on Inauguration Day, is slated to take effect on February 19. According to one of the lawsuits, it could affect hundreds of thousands of people born in the country. In 2022, there were about 255,000 births of citizen children to mothers living in the country illegally and about 153,000 births to two such parents, according to the four-state lawsuit filed in Seattle.
The Trump administration argued in papers filed Wednesday that the states have no cause of action against the order and that no damage has yet been done, so temporary relief is not required. The administration’s lawyers also clarified that the order only applies to people born after February 19, when it will come into force.
The United States is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship—the principle of jus soli, or “right to the land”—applies. Most are in America, and Canada and Mexico are among them.
The lawsuits argue that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship to people born and naturalized in the United States, and states have interpreted the amendment that way for a century.
Ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War, the amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.”
Trump’s order asserts that children of non-citizens are not subject to US jurisdiction and orders federal agencies not to recognize citizenship for children who do not have at least one parent who is a citizen.
A key case involving birthright citizenship occurred in 1898. The Supreme Court ruled that Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants, was an American citizen because he was born in the country. After a trip abroad, he faced being denied re-entry by the federal government on the grounds that he was not a citizen under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
But some advocates of immigration restrictions have argued that the case clearly involved children born to parents who were both legal immigrants. They say it is less clear whether this applies to children born to parents who live in the country illegally.
Trump’s order prompted the attorneys general to share their personal connections to birthright citizenship. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, for example, an American citizen by birth and the country’s first Chinese-American elected attorney general, said the trial was personal to him.
“There is no legitimate legal debate on this issue. But the fact that Trump is dead wrong will not stop him from inflicting serious harm on American families like my own right now,” Tong said this week.
One of the lawsuits aimed at blocking the executive order includes the case of a pregnant woman, identified as “Carmen,” who is not a citizen but has lived in the United States for more than 15 years and has a pending visa application that may lead to permanent residence status.
“Depriving children of the ‘priceless treasure’ of citizenship is a serious harm,” the suit states. “It denies them the full membership in American society to which they are entitled.”
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Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey.
