By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to restrict birthright citizenship, a heavy on the policy aimed at curbing the influx of undocumented migrants.
The court, in an eagerly awaited decision on the final day of its term, ruled 6-3 to maintain the right to American citizenship for nearly everyone born on US soil.
Trump signed an executive order last year on the first day of his second term in the White House decreeing that children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become US citizens.
Lower courts blocked the move, ruling that under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment nearly everyone born on US soil is an American citizen.
The Supreme Court agreed in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts.
“Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause,” Roberts wrote.
In an unprecedented move for a sitting US President, Trump personally attended oral arguments on birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court in April.
Trump stayed for the presentation by his solicitor general, John Sauer, but did not remain for the arguments of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Cecillia Wang, who defended birthright citizenship.
Other measures put in place by Trump who returned to power last year January in his wider campaign to restrict immigration, include the expulsion of millions of undocumented migrants and deportation of migrants to third countries.
Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship was premised on the notion that anyone in the United States illegally, or on a visa, is not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country and therefore excluded from automatic citizenship.
The Supreme Court rejected such a narrow definition in a landmark 1898 case involving a man named Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco in 1873 to parents who had come to the United States from China.
After a visit to China, Wong Kim Ark was denied reentry into the United States in 1895 under the Chinese Exclusion Acts.
The Supreme Court ruled, however, that he was a US citizen by virtue of being born in the United States.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship is the third major loss for Trump this term. The justices struck down most of his global tariffs in February and on Monday they blocked his bid to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.
