A UNITED States (US) Appeals Court has rejected an emergency request from President Donald Trump to vacate a ruling blocking his birthright citizenship order as part of the Republican’s hardline crackdown on immigration and illegal border crossings.
According to AFP, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the request for an emergency order putting on hold an injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle blocking the president’s directive.
The ICIR reported that Trump issued an executive order on January 20 – the day he assumed office as the 47th US president, directing relevant public institutions to deny citizenship for children born in the US to undocumented immigrants or people with temporary status in the country. It was one of the 42 orders issued by the president that day.
According to Reuters, this was the first time an appellate court had weighed in on Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, whose fate may ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. Judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire have likewise blocked the order, and appeals are underway in two of the cases.
About the executive order
Trump is seeking to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents are undocumented or are in the United States temporarily.
Under an 1868 constitutional amendment, anyone born on American soil is deemed a US citizen.
The ICIR reported that 22 Democratic-led states, along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, on January 21, filed lawsuits in federal courts in Boston and Seattle claiming Trump violated the U.S. Constitution.
On February 5, another federal judge, Deborah Boardman, placed a lid on the order, which compelled Trump’s legal team to take the case to the Appeal Court.
The three-judge panel in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that birthright citizenship “is beyond the president’s authority to condition or deny” because it is “about citizenship.
The ICIR reports that anyone born in the U.S. is considered a citizen at birth, which derives from the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment that was added to the Constitution in 1868.
The amendment reads: “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.”
Nanji is an investigative journalist with the ICIR. She has years of experience in reporting and broadcasting human angle stories, gender inequalities, minority stories, and human rights issues.