Children born in the United States have no constitutional protections for citizenship, Utah A.G. Derek Brown said in an amicus brief filed by 18 Republican attorneys general supporting President Donald Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship.
Shortly after being sworn in last month, Trump signed an executive order that refuses to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children of immigrants without legal status — a practice with more than a century of legal precedent interpreting the 14th Amendment to guarantee citizenship to every child born on U.S. soil, with limited exceptions.
Brown — along with Republican attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming — filed the brief in federal court Monday.
Nearly two dozen states subsequently filed a lawsuit seeking to block the order. The brief Utah signed was submitted in defense of Trump.
America’s long history of interpreting birthright citizenship as protected by the Constitution is the basis for the lawsuit, which is led by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin. In a statement announcing the action, Platkin called Trump’s order a “flagrant violation of our Constitution,” and said, “state attorneys general have been preparing for illegal actions like this one.”
Democrats’ misinterpretation of the “citizenship clause of the United States is a strong incentive for illegal immigration and birth tourism in the hope of providing children with citizenship,” the amicus reads. “That increased illegal immigration has serious costs on the states.”
“For too long, mass numbers of illegal aliens and foreign tourists—especially from China—have been entering our country just to give birth here and hand their kids American citizenship,” said Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, who led the effort, in a statement. “On top of that, taxpayers are on the hook to pay for it.”
In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, Brown said, “Birthright citizenship allows people to exploit American tax dollars and is inconsistent with sensible immigration policy, the views of almost half of all Americans, and the text of the Constitution. This legal issue is not settled under case law, and I support President Trump’s efforts to resolve it.”
Utah’s Republican governor has so far expressed a different view from its attorney general on the matter. In an interview last month, Gov. Spencer Cox — also an attorney by profession — questioned the constitutionality of Trump’s order.
“That’s a constitutional issue,” Cox told The Tribune during an interview last month. “I don’t think with the stroke of a pen that presidents can change the Constitution, so I don’t see that happening.”
He added, “It would take a constitutional change, I think, and I’m open to going through that process, but I would be more interested in something that would prevent someone coming here just to have a baby to gain that citizenship.”
