A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s day-one order to end birthright citizenship for the children of non-citizens.
Responding to a request from officials in Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour issued a restraining order against the Trump administration's move to redefine the rights established in the 14th Amendment. Trump's order was set to take effect on Feb. 19 but will remain on hold until a case from those three states makes its way through the courts.
In the suit filed on Tuesday, attorneys for those states said that Trump's order would affect hundreds of thousands of children currently in the United States. In total, 22 states have sued the Trump admin over the order.
In the hearing on Thursday, Judge Coughenour called Trump's order "blatantly unconstitutional." The Ronald Reagan appointee said the move from Trump's administration "boggles the mind" and flies in the face of long-established interpretations of the 14th Amendment.
While the Trump administration's attorneys argued that the states had no standing to sue in advance of the order's implementation, Coughenour disagreed in his Thursday ruling. The judge said that states stood to lose out on federal funding and that residents within the states could be deprived of their rights. He said Trump's order would pose “immediate, ongoing, and significant” harms that “cannot be remedied in the ordinary course of litigation.”
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, declares 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.” Trump claimed in the order that undocumented immigrants’ children were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, a notion Coughenour rejected.
“Are they not subject to the decisions of the immigration courts?” he asked. “Must they not follow the law while they are here?”
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