Supreme Court: Children of Illegal Aliens or Tourists are not U.S. Citizens
Commentary
May 22, 2025
By Gabriel Canaan
On the very day Donald Trump became president again, he signed an executive order prospectively eliminating birthright citizenship for children born to aliens unlawfully present in the United States.
Immediately, lawsuits were filed in a half-dozen jurisdictions across the country challenging this order.
The groups bringing these suits claim the order disrupts long-standing legal norms governing citizenship. Yet, in fact, Trump’s contention — that birthright citizenship is not possessed by children of illegal aliens under the “correct interpretation of the law” — is exactly right.
Birthright citizenship is conventionally understood to apply to any child born in the United States, regardless of the immigration status of that child’s parents. This view is based on the common law principle of jus soli (“right of soil”), which is said to be incorporated in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This understanding of the Citizenship Clause, however, despite its prevalence in academia and political commentary, is based on a mistaken and incomplete reading of controlling Supreme Court precedent.
https://www.irli.org/supreme-court-children-of-illegal-aliens-or-tourists-are-not-u-s-citizens/