Judge Donald Trump has stopped efforts to terminate US citizenship at birth
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A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order denying US citizenship to children born in the country to unauthorized immigrants, making cracking down on immigration a top priority in his second term.
U.S. District Judge John Cohnour in Washington state on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order blocking the president’s ban, calling the policy “unconstitutional,” according to media reports.
The decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed Tuesday by four Democratic state attorneys-general, led by Washington state — one of several legal challenges quickly mounted against the order Trump signed on Monday, just hours after he was sworn in as president.
Cogoner’s decision marks the Trump administration’s first legislative setback three days after returning to the White House. The wave of executive orders the president has signed—many of them focused on immigration—has set off serious and planned legal battles.
Other Democratic state attorneys general and civil rights groups filed separate lawsuits this week seeking to overturn the birthright ban, all claiming similar violations of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that all “persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States.”
The Washington Attorney General’s office said: “If allowed to stand, the unconstitutional and un-American system will deprive thousands of newborns and children in Washington of their constitutionally guaranteed ability to participate fully and fairly in American society.” their citizenship”
Oregon, Arizona and Illinois have joined the suit.
Trump’s order instead argued that the Fourteenth Amendment does not generally extend citizenship to anyone born in the US.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week, he said the charges were part of a “leftist protest” and that the administration would expect them in court.
The Justice Department said in a filing on Wednesday that the order is “a key part of President Trump’s latest actions to address this nation’s broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border, based on his significant immigration authority.”