Washington Immigration researchers said in a briefing on Tuesday that they are examining the legal ramifications of the White House’s decision to terminate birthright citizenship, as well as broad directives that prohibit asylum and other immigration-related measures, a day after President Donald Trump signed a number of executive orders pertaining to immigration.
Shortly after Trump signed the birthright citizenship order, the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights organizations filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire. In the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, 18 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the order on Tuesday as well. California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Massachusetts are among those states.
Furthermore, the Trump administration was sued in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle by state attorneys general from Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington over birthright citizenship, which states that citizens are those born in the United States, excluding children of foreign diplomats even if their parents are not.
Additional executive ordersOn Monday night, Trump signed a bill to halt asylum, declare a national emergency at the southern border, and restore a number of strict immigration laws from his first administration.
According to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that studies migration and organized the press briefing, executive orders do not alter the fact that U.S. law grants access to asylum, which I believe will play a significant role in what I anticipate to be swift litigation of these measures.
Furthermore, new immigration enforcement orders are already being issued by the Trump administration.
Benjamine Huffman, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, issued two orders on Monday. One revokes immigration and customs enforcement and customs and border protection policies from the Biden administration that restricted enforcement in or close to “sensitive” locations, including schools, houses of worship, medical institutions, relief centers, and social assistance centers, among other locations.
DHS stated in a statement that the Trump Administration trusts our courageous law officers to exercise common sense and would not tie their hands.
The other order puts humanitarian parole back on a case-by-case basis and restricts its usage. For Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, the Biden administration exercised that power.
CBP One, a well-known app that migrants used to schedule meetings with asylum authorities, was shut down within hours of Trump taking office, resulting in the cancellation of all upcoming appointments. Over that, the ACLU has already filed a lawsuit.
However, the birthright citizenship edict was the one that sparked numerous judicial challenges right away.
According to the executive order, if one parent is in the country illegally or if the other parent is a noncitizen or a holder of a green card, the federal government will not recognize or grant citizenship documents to any child born after February 19 to parents who are in the country without the required authorization.
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship, which was maintained in a Supreme Court decision in 1898.
There are approximately 1.8 million children born in the United States with two illegal parents and 5.5 million children born with at least one undocumented immigrant parent.
At the briefing, Muzaffar Chishti, a senior scholar and head of the Migration Policy Institute office at New York University School of Law, stated, “I think if it wasn’t already obvious, it is just the operational sort of challenge of even making this interpretation live.”
He maintained that the executive order would require hospitals to review everyone’s papers and would be applicable to every child born in the United States after it was passed.
According to Chishti, you cannot simply restrict yourself to those you believe could be in the country illegally.
In his inauguration speech and other remarks on Monday, Trump, who ran on a platform of mass deportations without the necessary paperwork, barely mentioned the pledge.
But according to Doris Meissner, head of U.S. immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, his executive orders are a symptom of that initiative.
According to Meissner, the mass deportations program is addressed by a number of executive orders pertaining to accelerated removal, expanding jail capacity, and exchanging information with local law enforcement.
However, she said that some of the executive orders signed could be undermined by a measure that is expected to reach Trump’s desk and become law, which would use a lot of resources and make deportation procedures more difficult.
One presidential order, for instance, terminates the catch-and-release policy. This program permits detained migrants to reside in American communities while they wait for an immigration court to hear their asylum applications.
S. 5, a bill that Congress is working to enact, would mandate obligatory imprisonment for foreign nationals who are charged with or accused of property crimes, assaults of law enforcement officials, and injuries or deaths of U.S. citizens.
According to Meissner, both need a sizable detention capacity to be enforced. As a result, we observe barriers and limitations, but we also anticipate persistent and continuous dangers that exacerbate already high levels of anxiety and uncertainty.
