Respect the Constitution

President Trump has asserted that he will sign an executive order seeking to end the right to U.S. citizenship for children born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents.

Despite his insistence to the contrary, Trump can’t unilaterally end birthright citizenship. It’s a right, and it’s enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Constitutional amendments can’t be overridden by a presidential executive order.

Certainly, Trump won’t be able to stop birthright citizenship before the midterm elections (although the timing of this announcement suggests he’s using it as a political cudgel to boost turnout among the anti-immigrant elements in his base).

But Trump’s threat represents more than just one man’s passing political whim.

Birthright citizenship has been a contentious issue among Republican politicians for years.

While some Republican leaders, like outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., aren’t interested in getting rid of birthright citizenship, plenty are eager to restrict or end it.

That list includes senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller and powerful U.S. senators like Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. After Trump’s statement, Graham immediately announced he would introduce legislation to end birthright citizenship.

Should a potential Trump executive order spark a legal case over citizenship, there’s also a path for the U.S. Supreme Court to end U.S. citizenship for the children of noncitizens.

The last time the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on birthright citizenship was the 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark, a San Franciscoborn cook of Chinese descent. After a trip to China, Wong was denied re-entry to the United States — so he sued, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor.

Since then, courts and lawmakers have relied on the view that even the children of noncitizens are U.S. citizens, by constitutional right, as long as they’re born in this country.

But Wong’s parents were authorized to be in the United States.

So it’s possible that the Supreme Court, especially one with a newly seated Justice Brett Kavanaugh, could rule narrowly that the children of unauthorized immigrants aren’t subject to the same rights of citizenship as the children of legal immigrants.

This can’t be allowed to happen. The language of the 14th Amendment is plain: All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens.

Furthermore, the spirit of the 14th Amendment — which was passed during Reconstruction to enfranchise the children of former slaves — was to provide a legal bulwark for minorities against violent bigotry. As we’ve seen over the past terrible week in this country, the need for that bulwark remains as strong as ever.