CHICAGO (CBS) — Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said he’s prepared to challenge President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in the U.S., just one of many fronts in which state officials are expected to square off with the Trump administration when it comes to immigration.
"The language in the 14th Amendment is clear and unambiguous. If you are born in this country, you are a citizen of this country," Raoul said on Monday of Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.
On the first day of his second term in office on Monday, Trump signed an executive order seeking to deny birthright citizenship to any children born to parents who are unauthorized immigrants or temporary visa holders.
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states "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."
The federal government has long interpreted that to mean the Constitution grants the right of citizenship to anyone born on American soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
Nonetheless, after signing his executive order, Trump has directed federal agencies to stop issuing passports, citizenship certificates. and other documents to children born in the U.S. to mothers in the country illegally and fathers who are not citizens or legal permanent residents, or to mothers who are temporary visa holders (and fathers who are not citizens or legal permanent residents).
The president has said his order, which is not retroactive, should be enforced within 30 days, but it already faces a legal challenge. The American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant advocacy groups have filed a federal lawsuit in New Hampshire seeking to overturn Trump’s action. A group of Democratic state attorneys general in 18 states also have filed their own federal lawsuit to stop Trump’s executive order.
While Raoul has not yet formally joined either of those lawsuits, Raoul said he’s also prepared to challenge Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.
"I, myself, am a child of immigrants from Haiti. So I’m a birthright baby," Raoul said. "Birthright citizenship has been challenged in the past and has been upheld by the Supreme Court."
The Supreme Court has weighed in on the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment numerous times. In 1898, in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that "Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization."
Raoul and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also have vowed to uphold the state’s Illinois TRUST Act, which prohibits local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal authorities in civil immigration actions.
Both Pritzker and Raoul have noted that the TRUST Act does not stop local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in cases where a judge has signed a criminal warrant.
But in cases not involving criminal warrants, Pritzker said he will do everything in his power to protect law-abiding undocumented immigrants from being deported from the state.
"Convicted violent criminals who are undocumented should be removed from this country, period, end of sentence. That already is the law. There are people who have deportation orders as a result of that, and they should be removed. Nothing wrong with that," he said. "Ripping families apart, people who are law-abiding residents of the state of Illinois or of this country – law-abiding residents – ripping those families apart not acceptable to Americans, and we’re gonna stand up for them in the state of Illinois."
Region: Chicago,Local,City: Chicago
via Syndicated Local – CBS Chicago https://ift.tt/7NG4udj
January 21, 2025 at 12:42PM
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