WASHINGTON – Civil rights groups that successfully fought President Donald Trump’s first attempt to curtail birthright citizenship are targeting his latest effort.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups asked a federal judge on Aug. 11 to make it “unquestionably clear” that Trump’s new directive can’t be enforced.
“Trump's executive orders are a ham-handed attempt to distract the American people from the Supreme Court’s clear holding: that birthright citizenship is protected by our Constitution,” Carol Rose, executive director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a statement.
In June, the Supreme Court affirmedthat children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present in the country are citizens at birth.
The few exceptions to birthright citizenship are for children of foreign diplomats or babies born to enemies in occupied territory.
But Trump this month issued new orders seeking to expand those exceptions.
The president's first order on Aug. 6 declares certain individuals are ineligible for birthright citizenship if neither of their parents is a citizen, including the child of an "alien enemy" or foreign government employee. It also targets the children of parents who engage in a "commercial transaction" to access birthright citizenship, including paying "to ensure that the person’s mother is present in the United States, or a territory of the United States, to give birth."
In a second order, which the ACLU has not challenged, Trump tasked the State Department and Department of Homeland Security with stopping individuals from entering the country "for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism."
The administration said it is focused on children who "do not fall within the rule of birthright citizenship as announced by the Supreme Court."
But the ACLU argues Trump is continuing to claim power to redefine birthright citizenship that the Supreme Court said he does not have.
“To avoid any doubt in this regard,” the group said in a filingin federal court in New Hampshire, “the Court should underscore that the government may not strip away class members’ citizenship through any executive orders or other similarly flawed assertions of Executive power over birthright citizenship.”
Trump has sought to restrict birthright citizenship as part of a sweeping, hardline immigration agenda centered around mass deportations. He campaigned on a promise to overturn the constitutional provision and attended Supreme Court oral arguments in the case, which bore his name, Trump v. Barbara.
Among the Trump administration's arguments for limiting birthright citizenship: Birth tourism incentivizes illegal immigration and threatens national security. The justices ruled 6-3 against the Trump administration in late June.
"Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights − to freely participate in our political community," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to 'every free-born person in this land.' We keep that promise today."
Contributing: Zac Anderson
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Civil rights groups fight Trump's new birthright citizenship order
