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A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order denying US citizenship to the children born in the country of unauthorized immigrants, dealing a blow to an immigration crackdown that is a top priority of his second presidency.
Residents of the states that filed the Washington-led lawsuit were “irreparably harmed by being deprived of their constitutional right to citizenship” and “subjected to the risk of deportation and family separation; depriving them of access to federal funding for medical care. . . and affecting their education, employment and health,” John Coughenour, a U.S. District Judge in Washington state, wrote in the restraining order issued Thursday.
The decision is temporary, but will remain in force pending a final decision in the courts.
“These damages are immediate, continuing and significant and cannot be remedied in the ordinary course of litigation,” the judge added.
Speaking from the bench during a hearing Thursday, Coughenour called the policy “plainly unconstitutional,” according to news reports.
Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, said: “Obviously, we’re going to appeal it. They brought him before a certain judge in Seattle. . . There are no surprises with that judge.”
The judge’s decision echoed the opening attack of Trump’s first presidential administration, when he issued an executive order within days of taking office reducing the number of refugees admitted to the US and suspending entry for travelers from several countries. Muslim majority. That order, too, was quickly suspended by the courts, although an amended version was eventually upheld.
The birthright order was one of a slew of policy efforts aimed at imposing strict immigration restrictions. Trump’s order would also extend to children of mothers who are born in the US during a temporary stay, such as on a work, student or tourist visa.
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed Tuesday by four Democratic attorneys general — one of several legal challenges that quickly mounted against the order Trump signed Monday, just hours after being sworn in as president.
Coughenour’s decision marks the first legal setback for the Trump administration just three days after returning to the White House. The president’s executive orders — many of them focused on immigration — have set off what are expected to be bitter and protracted legal battles.
Other Democratic state attorneys general as well as civil rights groups this week filed separate lawsuits to overturn the birthright ban, all claiming similar violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says that all “persons born or naturalized in the US . . . are citizens of the United States”.
The Washington Attorney General’s Office said: “If allowed to stand, the unconstitutional and un-American order would cause thousands of newborns and children in Washington to lose their ability to participate fully and fairly in American society as citizens , regardless of the guarantee of the Constitution. of their citizenship.”
Oregon, Arizona and Illinois joined the suit.
Trump’s order argued that the Fourteenth Amendment did not “universally extend citizenship to all those born” in the US.
The Justice Department said Thursday that it “will vigorously defend President Trump’s executive order, which correctly interprets the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week, she said the lawsuits were part of “leftist resistance” and the administration would fight them in court.
The DoJ said in a filing Wednesday that the order was “an integral part of President Trump’s recent actions, consistent with his significant immigration authority, to address this country’s broken immigration system and ongoing crisis on the southern border”.
