Newly elected president Donald Trump’s contentious executive decision to change the birthright citizenship in the United States has been blocked, at least temporarily, by a federal judge.
Seattle-based District Judge John Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order, and called Trump’s move “blatantly unconstitutional”.
The judge was ruling on a case filed by four Democratic-led states – Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon.
Eighteen other states have filed a similar lawsuit in the Massachusetts federal court. Since Trump signed the order, at least six lawsuits have been filed challenging it, most of them by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general.
Trump had directed US agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father is a US citizen or lawful permanent resident.
“I am having trouble understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this order is constitutional. It just boggles my mind,” Judge Coughenour told a US Justice Department lawyer defending Trump’s order after hearing him argue for 25 minutes again the attorney for Washington state.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”
Birthright citizenship dispute
The states argued that Trump’s order violated the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, overturned the Supreme Court’s notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision that had declared that the Constitution’s protections did not apply to Black ‘slaves’.
“Obviously, we will appeal,” Trump said of the ruling.
In a brief filed by the Justice Department, the executive order was said to be an “integral part to address this nation’s broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border.”
On the day Trump took over as president for the second time, he declared illegal immigration a “national emergency” and ordered the Pentagon to provide support for border wall construction, detention space, and migrant transportation.
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