Trump rips Ryan on U.S. birthright
President also says number of troops being sent to help border agents could hit 15,000
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pushed forward with his vow to end birthright citizenship Wednesday, even as it put him in conflict with a key leader in his party.
Also Wednesday, Trump said the number of military troops deployed to the U.S.Mexican border could reach 15,000 — roughly double the number the Pentagon said it currently plans for a mission whose dimensions are shifting daily.
The president in tweets said he was willing to take the fight over the constitutionality of an executive order that would deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents in the country illegally under the 14th Amendment to the Supreme Court.
He also used Twitter to harshly 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. “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.”
In remarks to reporters before leaving Washington Ryan 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-yearold 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.
Regarding the the troop deployment, the Pentagon said “more than 7,000” military personnel were being sent to the Southwest border to support the Customs and Border Protection agents. Officials said that number could reach a maximum of about 8,000 under present plans.
Just last week officials were indicating that about 800 to 1,000 might be sent. On Monday, officials announced that about 5,200 were being deployed. The next day, the Air Force general running the operation said more than the initially announced total were going, and he pointedly rejected a news report that it could reach 14,000, saying that was “not consistent with what’s actually being planned.”
Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, commander of U.S. Northern Command, told reporters the number would exceed the initial contingent of 5,200, but he offered no estimate of the eventual total.
Just 24 hours later, President Trump defends his plan to undo the guarantee for all babies born in the U.S. Trump thrust new uncertainty into the picture, catching the Pentagon by surprise.
With his eyes squarely on Tuesday’s contests, Trump has rushed a series of immigration declarations, promises and actions as he tries to mobilize supporters to retain Republican control of Congress. His own Republican campaign in 2016 concentrated on border fears.
“As far as the caravan is concerned, our military is out,” Trump said. “We have about 5,800. We’ll go up to anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, ICE and everybody else at the border.”
His comment was the latest twist in a story that has prompted questions about whether Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was allowing the military to be leveraged as a stunt.
“We don’t do stunts,” Mattis said Wednesday.
Trump rejected the idea he was “fearmongering” or using the issue for political purposes, but his escalating rhetoric in the waning days of the campaign season calls that denial into question. Trump has railed against illegal immigration, including several caravans of migrants from Central America slowly moving toward the U.S. border. The caravan of an estimated 4,000 people is still nearly 1,000 miles from the border.
Trump’s comments Wednesday left some in the Pentagon scratching their heads. Officials said they had no plans to deploy as many as 15,000 troops. The number conceivably could reach 10,000, counting the 2,100 National Guard sol- political diers who have been operating along the border for months as part of a separate but related mission. The number of active- duty troops tapped for deployment stood at 7,000 as of Wednesday but could reach 8,000.
A deployment of 15,000 would bring the military commitment on the border to roughly the same level as in war-torn Afghanistan. And it would more than double the number of people thought to be in the caravans.
In his Wednesday tweet, Trump asserted that birthright citizenship is not subject to the 14th Amendment because of the inclusion of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
Legal experts have debated for years how to interpret the citizenship clause of the 14th Amend- ment, but the consensus is one-sided: Most agree that it 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 is that it is more likely that a constitutional amendment would be needed to change the birthright conferred on people born here.