Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
President Donald Trump
said Wednesday that ending birthright citizenship is “much less complex” than people think. Earlier, he lashed out on Twitter at House Speaker Paul Ryan for disagreeing.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pushed forward with his vow to end birthright citizenship on Wednesday, even as it put him in open conflict with a key leader in his party.
The president in tweets said he was willing to take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of an executive order that would deny children born in the United States to parents in the country illegally automatic citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
He also used Twitter to criticize House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who a day earlier said that Trump could not carry out such an act.
“Paul Ryan should be focusing on holding the Majority rather than giving his opinions on Birthright Citizenship, something he knows nothing about!” Trump tweeted Wednesday afternoon. “Our new Republican Majority will work on this, Closing the Immigration Loopholes and Securing our Border!”
The rebuke from Trump came one day after Ryan pushed back on the president’s remarks on the issue, saying “you cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.”
Ryan, who is not running for re-election, was in Kentucky on Tuesday campaigning for Republican Rep. Andy Barr when he responded to Trump’s comments about birthright citizenship. Democrats need to flip 23 Republican-held seats in Tuesday’s election to gain control of the House.
In remarks to reporters Wednesday evening before leaving Washington for a rally in Florida, Trump said the issue of birthright citizenship is “much less complex” than people think. He also maintained that a constitutional amendment would not be required and that the change could be achieved through “a simple vote in Congress” or an executive order.
Trump vowed in tweets earlier Wednesday to end the 150-year-old practice “one way or the other,” seeming to leave the door open to either congressional action or a constitutional amendment, which many legal scholars say would be necessary to achieve his aims.
Trump also said the issue would ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
Trump is seeking to end the long-standing right to U.S. citizenship for children born to noncitizens in the United States, a policy that he said in his tweets “costs our Country billions of dollars and is very unfair to our citizens.”
Trump also brought the issue up at a campaign rally Wednesday night in Florida.
“Under this policy, anyone who breaks into our country and has a child, the very next moment that child would be made a citizen for life. Great,” Trump told the crowd. “This policy has even created an entire industry of birth tourism — big business.”
Legal experts have debated for years how to interpret the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, but most agree that it in fact grants citizenship to those born on U.S. soil.
The first section of the amendment says: “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.”
Some legal scholars argue that the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” seems to give the government some leeway to restrict the right, just as other constitutional principles can be limited. But the mainstream opinion from both right and left is that it is more likely that a constitutional amendment, rather than federal legislation or an executive order, would be needed to change the birthright conferred on people born in the U.S.
Trump has previously accused former President Barack Obama of abusing his authority by establishing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed young migrants to live in the country without fear of deportation.
But the president pointed to Obama’s action Wednesday in defending his own executive order proposal.
“Certainly, if he can do DACA, we can do this by executive order,” Trump said.