On Day One of the second Trump administration, one of several executive orders signed by President Donald Trump addressed the issue of birthright citizenship. Titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” the order asserts that:
[T]he Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
The order goes on to provide:
Among the categories of individuals born in the United States and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the…
