Just in case you thought you had heard and seen it all from the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, I’m here to break it to you, the worst is yet to come.
Even with the direct flight between Kenya and the US, President Trump has today said that he will bring to an end the right to citizenship for children born to non-citizens and unauthorized immigrants on US soil.
Speaking in an interview with Axios, President Trump said that it could be done with legislation but said that he would use an executive order instead.
“It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t. You can definitely do it with an act of Congress. But now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order,” Trump told Axios.
Such a move would be seen as a violation of the US Constitution, which was amended 150 years ago in 1868.
According to the amended constitution, “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.”
President Trump did not say when he would sign the order but whether the President follows through on his threat or not, the issue joins a string of actions intended to thrust the matter of immigration which has become his signature issue, into the front of voters’ minds as they head to polls next week.
An executive order would spark an uphill legal battle for Trump about whether the President has the unilateral ability to declare that children born in the US to those living here illegally aren’t citizens. According to most scholars, the President cannot make such a declaration as there’s more than a century of case law that suggests that the Constitution protects against just the type of legal decree he claims he is preparing.
The American Civil Liberties Union slammed Trump’s proposal saying, “The president cannot erase the Constitution with an executive order, and the 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee is clear,” said Omar Jadwat, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
“This is a transparent and blatantly unconstitutional attempt to sow division and fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms,” added Mr. Jadwat.
Do you think President Trump will be able to completely get rid of immigrants in the US?
