Trump’s DOJ Responds To Pregnant Women Suing To Protect Birthright Citizenship
Story by Pocharapon Neammanee, Huff post, 2/2/25
The Trump administration responded on Friday to a lawsuit filed on behalf of five pregnant women who challenged his executive order to end birthright citizenship.
The case, filed in Maryland federal court in January, challenges President Donald Trump’s order, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” that seeks to make it so that that children born in the United States to parents who are undocumented immigrants or who are in the country on a temporary legal basis will not automatically be United States citizens.
In an opposition motion filed against the women on Friday, the Department of Justice characterized the order as “common sense.”
“Monica,” a Venezuelan-born medical doctor now living in South Carolina under temporary protected status, is one of the five represented in the case. She is due in August, and stated in her declaration to the court that she is frightened for her child because she cannot return to her country for citizenship.
“There is no Venezuelan Consulate in the United States where I could even apply for Venezuelan citizenship for my baby, and we would have to travel outside of the U.S. in order to obtain a Venezuelan passport for our child,” Monica wrote in her declaration.
“I was very shocked,” Monica told The Guardian. “This is a right that is in the constitution of this country — so you cannot imagine that they would take it away just because.”
The complaint, filed by immigrant advocacy groups Casa, Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, called the executive order, a “flagrant violation” of the Citizenship Clause in 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The Citizenship Clause states that “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.”
According to the logic of Trump’s order, the children of undocumented immigrants are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and thus the 14th Amendment does not apply to them.
Monica, along with the four other women represented in the case, stated in their declaration they are afraid to use their full names in the litigation out of fear of retaliation from the government, which for some may include deportation.
The advocacy groups also filed a temporary restraining order blocking the policy from going into effect, arguing that it would cause “irreparable harm.” The restraining order cites a previous legal case, calling the executive order “a form of punishment more primitive than torture,” by making a baby born in the U.S stateless.
One of the women, Liza, stated in her sworn declaration that she fears returning back to her home country of Russia out of fear of persecution, and thus wouldn’t be able to secure a Russian passport for her child.
“When I heard that President Trump signed an Executive Order that would deny my child United States citizenship, my world fell apart,” she said.
Federal district court Judge John Coughenour of Washington state temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order last week in a separate filing, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
“I have been on the bench for over four decades,” Coughenour reportedly said. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear.”
In the opposition motion filed Friday, the Justice Department defended the executive order, arguing the Constitution does not entitle “the children of those who have circumvented (or outright defied) federal immigration laws” to citizenship.
The filing characterized claims that the executive order is illegal as “dramatic assertions.” It quoted Trump’s claims that immigrants in the U.S unlawfully are a threat to national security, and argued that the situation warrants a “full panoply of immigration measures,” including the executive order.
The motion also echoed the executive order’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment. The DOJ wrote that a person under the “jurisdiction” of the U.S. must have a “direct and immediate allegiance,” which would not apply to “foreigners admitted temporarily or individuals here illegally.”