New Jersey leads effort to challenge Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship
Share:
New Jersey and more than a dozen states said Tuesday they are challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. New Jersey Democratic Attorney General Matt Platkin said Tuesday that he’s leading a group of 18 states, the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco in filing a lawsuit blocking Trump’s order.
“Presidents have broad power but they are not kings,” Platkin said. Trump’s order would end the policy of automatically granting citizenship to people born in the U.S., a move he said on the campaign trail he would do once in office. Platkin and immigrants rights advocates point to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that says people born in the U.S. and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens, saying it’s clear that it applies to people whose parents were not legally citizens at the time of their birth.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. President Donald Trump moved to end a decades-old immigration policy known as birthright citizenship when he ordered the cancellation of the constitutional guarantee that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ status.
Trump's roughly 700-word executive order, issued late Monday, amounts to a fulfillment of something he's talked about during the presidential campaign. But whether it succeeds is far from certain as immigration advocates file lawsuits to block the president.
