How birthright citizenship has emerged and evolved

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wants to end a constitutional right that has been used to grant citizenship to any baby born in the United States. Trump, in an interview with “Axios on HBO,” said his goal is halting guaranteed citizenship for babies of noncitizens and unauthorized immigrants.

U.S. citizenship through birth comes via the 14th Amendment, which was ratified after the Civil War to secure U.S. citizenship for newly freed black slaves. It later was used as a basis to guarantee citizenship to all babies born on U.S. soil after court challenges. Here is a look at the citizenship clause throughout U.S. history:

The 14th Amendment

In the aftermath of the Civil War, radical Republicans in Congress sought to push through a series of constitutional protections for newly emancipated black slaves. The 13th Amendment, ratified in December 1865, outlawed slavery. The 14th Amendment, ratified in July 1868, assured citizenship for all, including blacks. And the 15th Amendment, ratified in February 1870, awarded voting rights to black men, stating those rights should not be denied based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

“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,” the 14th Amendment says. “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

One of the writers of the clause, Senator Jacob Howard (R-MI.) said: “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

The amendment nullified

the Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that those descended from slaves could not be citizens. .

Fight for citizenship

Despite the citizenship clause and equal protections afforded under the 14th Amendment, Native Americans were consistently denied the benefits of U.S. birthright citizenship and it took decades for them to receive full citizenship, according to the nonpartisan National Constitution Center.

Native Americans who remained under tribal structures were not considered in determining the number of representatives for states in Congress because they were considered members of foreign nations. And if Native Americans left tribal structures, they weren’t eligible for naturalization. Congress granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. in 1924.

In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that San Francisco-born Wong Kim Ark was a U.S. citizen because he was born in the U.S. The federal government had tried to deny him re-entry to the U.S. under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

U.S.-born Mexican-Americans in the 1930s were denied citizenship protections when authorities

in California and Texas deported them to Mexico during the Great Depression. U.S.-born Japanese-Americans were denied citizenship protections when they were forced into Japanese internment camps during World War II.

An executive order

Geoffrey Hoffman, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Houston Law Center, says some proponents of immigration restrictions have argued the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof ” in the 14th Amendment allows the U.S. to deny citizenship to babies born to those in the country illegally. He claims those arguments are false since any person in the U.S., besides diplomats, would be subject to U.S. laws.

But when Senator Lyman Trumbull (D-Il.), a key figure in the drafting of the 14th Amendment, was asked what the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ” meant, he responded: Not owing allegiance to anyone else.”

Any executive order could be subjected to a judicial challenge. Hoffman said an executive order banning the citizenship clause would violate laws of denaturalization and would attempt to strip citizenship retroactively — another violation of the Constitution.