Trump to begin enforcing birthright citizenship order as early as this month, DOJ says

Trump administration lawyers told a federal judge Tuesday that they could begin enforcing President Donald Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship before the end of July — moving quickly to enforce the controversial order just days after a landmark Supreme Court ruling.

Lawyers for the administration told U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman that they would not enforce Trump's executive order before July 27, in recognition of a 30-day stay ordered by the Supreme Court in its ruling last week.

"The Court’s stay thus allows Defendants to immediately begin to 'develop and issu[e] public guidance about the executive’s plans to implement the executive order," Justice Department attorney Brad Rosenberg said Tuesday in a court filing.

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The update comes after Trump officials testified Monday at an emergency hearing in Maryland, where Boardman grilled government lawyers for details on how they plan to enforce the president's order. 

Trump's order, signed on the first day of his second White House term, directs all U.S. government agencies to refuse to issue citizenship documents to children born to illegal immigrants, or who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen of lawful permanent resident. 

It was almost immediately blocked by lower courts, before eventually making its way to the Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in May. 

The high court's 6-3 ruling Friday narrowly focused on the authority of lower courts' ability to issue nationwide injunctions and did not wade into the legality of Trump's executive order, which served as the legal pretext for the case.

In the ruling, the justices said plaintiffs seeking nationwide relief must file their cases as a class action lawsuit — prompting a flurry of action from the ACLU, CASA and other immigrant advocacy groups who amended their filings over the weekend.

In Monday's emergency hearing, Boardman demanded specifics from the administration. 

 

"Just to get to the heart of it," she said. "I want to know if the government thinks that it can start removing children from the United States who are subject to the terms of the executive order."

Rosenberg responded in the filing that July 27 "is the earliest date on which defendants may begin to apply" under the Supreme Court's stay. 

Lawyers for the Trump administration also stressed that the Supreme Court's ruling last week, which centered on universal injunctions, does not preclude it from taking other actions before that date, and said it plans to "immediately" begin developing and issuing public guidance on the order.

The high court's ruling touched off a flurry of new lawsuits from the ACLU and other immigration advocacy groups, who re-filed class action lawsuits in federal courts in Maryland and New Hampshire.

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The order, signed by Trump on his first day in office, was immediately challenged in January by more than 22 U.S. states and immigrants' rights groups, which argued the effort to end birthright citizenship was both unconstitutional and "unprecedented," threatening more than 100 years of legal precedent.

It also sparked deep and unyielding concerns from critics, who noted that roughly 150,000 children in the U.S. are born annually to parents of noncitizens. 

Advocates have warned possible fallout from the order could prove "catastrophic."

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"I think one thing we have documented in the record is the incredible stress, anxiety and fear that our plaintiffs are experiencing because they're not lawyers," CASA attorney William Powell said Monday. 

"It is confusing to them, and we can't really assure them the order is fully blocked, because it's not."