2w ago

Trump aims to end birthright citizenship, says American citizens with family here illegally may be deported

www.nbcnews.com Trump aims to end birthright citizenship, says American citizens with family here illegally may be deported

President-elect Donald Trump, in an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press,” also said he is open to working with Democrats on a legislative way to keep Dreamers in the U.S.

Summary

Trump announced plans to end birthright citizenship via executive action, despite its constitutional basis in the 14th Amendment.

He also outlined a mass deportation policy, starting with undocumented immigrants who committed crimes and potentially expanding to mixed-status families, who could face deportation as a unit.

Trump said he wants to avoid family separations but left the decision to families.

While doubling down on immigration restrictions, Trump expressed willingness to work with Democrats to create protections for Dreamers under DACA, citing their long-standing integration into U.S. society.

171 comments

Start with musk or stfu
- Or barron

14th Amendment to the US Constitution
Section 1
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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
- Yeah, it's there, but as we've clearly seen, if the law isn't enforced, or is selectively enforced, it might as well not exist.
  
  Hell this exact amendment was openly ignored for nearly a century in that it is also meant to provide equality under the law for all citizens. But Women couldn't even vote for decades after this amendment was passed. Then there were a ton of laws on the books that were actively enforced that discriminated on race, sex, etc. Women's Suffrage and the Civil Rights Movement should not have been necessary after this amendment was passed. And yet....
- Start by getting rid of Ted Cruz, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Melania and all the Trump kids.
  
  Isn't it crazy that only one person on that list is just a mere millionaire, the rest are billionaires?
  Jr posted "Internet let's do your thing, let's find this guy" because he knew it was attack on his class.
  If we want to Make America Great Again we needed to get rid of these parasites. They make us fight with each other, while they are the reason we get poorer and poorer.
- 14A S3 wasn't enforced, why should 14A S1 be?
  
  Because it wasn't previously decided. However, in this case United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) is the Supreme Court ruling that determined the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted birthright citizenship to all persons born in the United States regardless of race or nationality.
  In order to reverse, the court itself has to do it. Not that it wouldn't.
- Whether or not children of unauthorized immigrants have birthright citizenship was never ruled on. A 1898 case (United States v. Wong Kim Ark) ruled that children of permanent residents have birthright citizenship, but never said anything about unauthorized immigrants.
  This supreme court could rule on it, which is probably gonna be that unauthorized immigrants are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof", therefore, their children do not get birthright citizenship.
  I mean that's the loophole they are gonna exploit, I don't agree with it, but that's what is gonna happen.
  
  which is probably gonna be that unauthorized immigrants are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof"
  From opening arguments podcast they said that was intended if say Mexico or Canada invaded, the soldiers bring their wives who give birth, then those kids are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US and not to be granted citizenship.
  Of course lawyers can twist anything and scotus is rigged, so expect that.
  
  If they're not "subject to the jurisdiction", doesn't that mean they can just commit whatever crimes they want? Could they even be deported?
  But that assumes the Republicans would be logical and consistent, when they are neither.
  
  Couldn't Trump just declare it that it's an official act?
- They are going to claim that if their patents are here illegally they aren't 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof'. No matter how stupid that idea is their supreme court may let it go anyway. They already shit all over other parts of the 14th.
  
  Doesn't saying they're not "subject to jurisdiction" mean they're outside general reach of the legal system, like a crime-drama character claiming diplomatic immunity?
  I'd love to see someone pull that string.
  
  Birthright. If you are born here, you are a citizen. That's what they are talkin1g about.
- Let's see how much the Constitution matters in a month and a half. Everyone who responds to the upcoming Trump madness with "it's unconstitutional" are in for a rude awakening.
- DoJ: "My lord, is that... constitutional?"
  SCOTUS: "I will make it constitutional"

i wish everyone would get rid of the assumption that the constitution will protect you
"that's unconstitutional!!!" doesn't mean jack shit anymore
- Every maga is downplaying his shit right now. “Not gonna happen” is what they all say.
  
  Yeah just like roe overturn didn't happen 🙄
  
  They'll deny it until it is happening and they feel safe to admit they believed him and wanted it to happen.
- I've noticed many Americans also talk about those 'unalienable rights' like it's some law of nature. They're not unalienable. Having rights is not a given. Ask many groups of people throughout history. You only have rights as long as others respect them. Where are your unalienable rights when you're grabbed off the street in a black van and taken somewhere without anyone knowing? When your fellow citizens / your government decides you shouldn't have them anymore? If rights were unalienable, why are they dependent on borders?
  Sometimes I think people feel too safe. Otherwise they wouldn't accept others losing their rights so easily. They still think they won't/can't lose their own.
  
  The constitution is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

My 86-year old mother is house-bound but she is the daughter of two immigrants who came over in the 1910's, so I guess she's gonna be shipped off to another country. I have no idea if my brother and I, both in our 50's would be subjected to deportation considering we haven't lived with her in over 30 years.
Maybe the US shouldn't have elected an out-and-out racist asshole.
- I'm the child of an immigrant and a native-born person. So does half of my citizenship get taken away?
  
  Decide which half of you body gets to stay
- Congrats, nearly everyone in the written history of america are immigrants. Anyone after the declaration ? Gone! Immigrants from first and second world war? Gone! Good old usa! ( /s incase its not obvious)

Not sure how he plans on deporting people who were born in the United States and have no citizenship anywhere else since not every country automatically gives it to people's children born abroad.
They would effectively have no home country to deport them too.
- Meaning they will stay in the concentration camps until Trump's Final Solution is implemented.
  
  Slavery is much more economically viable than extermination. So, thank you capitalism, I think?
  
  A "Fine ol' solution" as they say in Florida
  
  I should invest in corrections, sounds like a goldmine
- Hello. Australian here. Just ask our sadistic government. We do it all the time. Hint: It involves putting people in camps.
  
  Little camps for homework. Where you can concentrate.
- That didn't stop them from deporting people to Mexico in the 30s. A senator at the time estimated that 60% of those who were removed from the country were US Citizens
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation
  
  They can't do that unless Mexico agrees. They can't just drive people down to San Diego and then shove them into Tijuana.
- Even bigger question: what then?
  Say you deport a citizen of Mexican origin to Mexico. Can't they just, you know, go back? They're citizens, with a passport/id.
  The only alternative is to strip them (at least de facto) of their citizenship, which is literally a Hitler move (https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesetz_%C3%BCber_den_Widerruf_von_Einb%C3%BCrgerungen_und_die_Aberkennung_der_deutschen_Staatsangeh%C3%B6rigkeit, only a German source, unfortunately).
  
  Happened to my grandfather. A Jew born in Germany who emigrated to England in the late 1920s. I have his naturalisation papers from when he became a citizen of the UK in 1936 and his nationality is listed as "stateless."
  
  Yes they'll have to revoke citizenship.
- You are missing out on a key component of their plan: concentration camps.
  He has outright said that he plans on using the same law that was used to justify the internment of Japanese citizens during WW2.
  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/texas-land-trump-mass-deportation-b2650813.html
  https://www.salon.com/2024/10/11/theyre-animals-vows-mass-deportation-under-law-used-to-justify-japanese-internment-camps/
  Literal concentration camps are coming.
- He was already shocked Bahamas turned down his "offer" to send them deported people. I think it's only a matter of time before they send a plane somewhere anyhow and get US flights promptly banned everywhere.
- They would effectively become stateless. And how they do what from there depends a lot on where they are forcefully relocated to. Assuming the majority will be forced into Mexico, Mexico has an established legal process for accepting refugees. Through the application process, if approved, you (and your family unit) would gain permanent residency. It's not the same as citizenship, but you could stay there indefinitely and have mostly the same rights as Mexican citizens. You might run into issues with getting passports and traveling internationally, but at the least, you would be able to stay in Mexico. That depends on your refugee application being approved, and I'd imagine when the numbers cross over into the millions their established system would break down a bit and there would probably be very long delays during which you could be deported.
  If it's somewhere else, well, it varies widely. Most of the Caribbean islands have comparatively smaller populations and probably only handle migration on a small scale. It's very hard to say how things would play out. Many would almost certainly be forced to illegally immigrate back into America.
- He doesn't plan on shit. Even this Supreme Court would tell him to fuck off.
  
  Given that the Supreme Court ruled that all official (who decides?) acts are legal, I have no faith in them.

Anyone in the US who believes they have any sort of legal protection is just delusional. The only protection that exists there is through money.
- We're basically going back to an older era where rights are much less certain. Think of the rights people in the US had before Roe v Wade. Yep, we are basically back to before Roe v Wade was passed. That's the America we live in.
  
  We're going back to the "political spoils" system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system

It's never going to stop surprising me when a politician says he's going to do something, I tell people, and then he does it but so many people were still caught completely off guard. I imagine this is how many in the UK feel about Brexit.
- For real Brexit was a stunning result. I just remember this post results interview with same randoms about it and one of the yes voters was like "yea I just through it was never going to happen and voted yes as a laugh."
- It's unreal. Days after the election, people I work with were saying that Project 2025 was just propaganda and that he's not actually going to do all the stuff he said he would do.
  
  That's my mother to a T. She defends all the batshit stuff he spews by saying it's just a negotiating tactic to get to some "reasonable" compromise. Which may well be true, but it doesn't change the fact that his opening bid is always something batshit insane and/or cruel, and that he would happily go through with it, if he were allowed to.
- I'm surprised that you're surprised that they're surprised.
  
  I didn’t expect anyone to take it this far

Like his wife and his DOGE crony?
- The rules do not apply to the rich. I think at this point he has made that clear over and over again.

So is he going to stop renting his penthouses in Florida to Russians so they can have babies here to be US citizens? Or does his plan only affect brown people?
- This is libelous. The Russian penthouses are in NYC.
- Just the browns.
- Russians will be granted amnesty because of their willingness to accept our deportations into their labor camps.
  
  As if Trump will share the forced labor.
  No, this is an end run around the 14th and 13th amendments.
  He's going to round up the brown people and reinstall slavery.

What about his birthright citizenship? His family came to the Americas as immigrants too.
- He doesn't mean white people, silly.
  
  He's orange though
- Classic "Got mine, fuck you".
- His mother was from Scotland. Also, all of his kids except Tiffany should be denied birthright citizenship, right?
  
  And his wife, and her parents 😂

does that include melania and elon?
- No
  In other news, 34 criminal convictions by a unanimous jury (which is near impossible to win) doesn't make you a criminal either apparently. You're only a criminal if you're related to Biden (and don't worry, revenge porn by Marjorie is perfectly ok too)
  You could bring down the average conviction rate in the US simply by deporting Trump

"Doesn't the 14th Amendment pose a problem for that plan?"
"Not a problem, no one handles amendments like me. 14 amendments is nothing, when I...when I do the Christ stuff before food I do 15, 30, 100 amendments. And people say 'Wow, you are so good with the amendments, no one does the amendments like you.' So I got that all taken care of."
- He actually already opened an office to review and attempt to take away citizenship from people who already earned it, back in 2020.
- The Supreme Court in historically (and I can only imagine the current court will be the worst so far) has never been able to count to 14 much less interperate it.

This would be huge. Much like Europe, America's population will decline. You need immigrants.
- Immigrants are the heart and soul of this country. I can't even imagine wanting to live in whatever milquetoast, boring-ass, white bread America that these idiots want.
  
  They want it to look like 1950s propaganda, but work like feudalism.
  
  I like immigration too. The right’s issue with immigration isn’t immigration itself.
- They'll have to sure it up with forced pregnancy next
- It's not gonna happen. It would open up challenges to constitutional amendments that he and his supporters care about.
  
  He doesn't care about the constitution. Like not even a little. He has said as much when he called for the termination of the constitution in 2022.
  
  Don't worry, the supreme kangaroo court will find a way

I am not a lawyer, this is my interpretation of the situation.
So heres what I think will happen.
Birthright citizenship will not be completely gone.
To recap, 14th Amendment, Section1 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.
What will most likely happen is the DoJ under trump will take it to the supreme court, then the 6 conservatives will rule that unauthorized immigrants are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof", so therefore their children do not get citizenship at birth. Maybe this is retroactive, maybe it applies from then on, I don't know.
But thats the most likely scenario.
Because we had a very conservative court back in the 1898 (remember, black people in this era couldn't even vote in southern states) that ruled that (United States v. Wong Kim Ark)
a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China",[5] automatically became a U.S. citizen at birth.
So I doubt this supreme court is more conservative than a 1898 supreme court so they most likely are not overturning that.
Basically, that court ruled that children of permanent residents have birthright citizenship, but never ruled on whether children of unauthorized immigrants have birthright citizenship. This 6-3 supreme court is gonna answer that. Which is gonna be a no, unfortunately.
- More likely, a lower court shoots it down, and there's no basis for an appeals court to do anything different. They tweak it and try again. That one also fails. Try again.
  Eventually, they get something that threads the needle. This is how the "Muslim ban" went.
  
  I mean, the supreme court could always pull out the "Original Jurisdiction" BS and take it straight there.
- I enjoy the notion that they would argue that undocumented immigrants are not subject to US law in the fashion that diplomats aren't subject to US law, since that would effectively prevent anything except deportation as a punishment for crimes.
  "Your children can't be citizens, but you can murder with impunity until we ask you to leave".
  
  Lol dont give them ideas. They could treat them as "Enemy Aliens", putting them in guantanamo.
- I concur with your interpretation. But as for your final line, I’m not sure why this interpretation is unfortunate. We need to streamline and overhaul the immigration process for sure, but why is encouraging unregulated immigration a good thing?
  
  I say unfortunately because there could be problems with a child of an undocumented immigrant that is born and grew up in the US for their entire life, then suddenly losing their citizenship because of a court decision.
  Maybe if the decision did not apply retroactively, then I'd might be okay with it.

Latino men who voted for Trump right now:
😬
- Nah, they still think, “not me”
  
  right until they get back to Habbanah, then they're going to be "¿o no como puede seh que me lansan fuera de ehtadoh unidoh?"
  
  "I got mine, fuck you"
  
  Haha yeah, they are about to find out.
- They still think it's the illegals and their children.
- Yeah, no.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_German_National_Jews
  
  It primarily attracted members from the anticommunist middle class, small business owners, self-employed professionals such as physicians and lawyers, national conservatives, and nationalist World War I veterans, many of whom believed that Nazi antisemitism was only a rhetorical tool used to "stir up the masses."
  Wow, uncannily familiar.

Deport to where…
- When Republicans say deport 5% of the population what they mean is put them in camps until they die because there's no way they could process all that paperwork
  
  Even if they could process all that paperwork, those countries have to want those people back. You can't just land a bunch of C-130s full of people in Guatemala City and dump them onto the tarmac. That's not how anything works.
  So even if somehow they knew where every single person in those camps is "supposed" to go, many of them would stay there indefinitely anyway. Until, I guess, they come up with a Final Solution for them.

What I'm reading is that they want to deport Americans in "mixed status families", and then go after them as criminals when they don't just continue paying taxes and fulfilling the ridiculous reporting requirements as they try to resettle their life in a new home and the US demands that their new local residence actually be treated as foreign assets. Which is great for the rich, because it basically saturates the system in such a way that the focus is taken away from rich tax evaders and tax avoidance schemes as it is driven to deal with these new "criminals".
Ending birthright citizenship would lead to a lot of relief from the people leaving the US who are seeking renunciation - except I have a feeling that greed and the aforementioned reasons are going to find a way to still make them have to seek it.

This piece of shit is just trying to get rid of his wife and unattractive children.

I'm a bit conflicted in this, because Canada has similar issues with this but it's more "birth tourism" where people from various other countries come here for a limited time - have a child who is entitled to citizenship and all the benefits - and then leave. That child spend decades never setting foot in the country, but still be eligible for a passport, voting rights, and many other such things despite having no significant ties to the country, and neither parent being a citizen
- How is this an issue? How many people do you honestly go abroad explicitly to give birth there to gain the system?
  Sounds like you fell for yet another outrage clickbait. If 100 people do this, whatever. I rather have this than someone being born in a country and lives there their entire life but has no right of nationality there because their parents weren't there for 5 years prior to their birth or whatever the fuck the law says.
  UK has no citizenship by birth type and it hurts way more people than could ever hope to abuse it.
  
  It’s “game the system” just so you know.
  
  I looked it up there were 3,575 non-citizen births in Canada in 2023.
  I couldn't find any numbers on how many were deliberate
  
  Ah yes, the "outrage clickbait" that is a known issue and has been the subject of numerous studies by government and reputable institutions both pre and post pandemic.
  Guess we should send the border services agency a memo that it's probably only a hundred people and they should remove it from the things they literally screen for, because some Internet genius is sure it's nothing to worry about...

Who could have possibly seen this coming?

Insanely unAmerican.
- Hate is a very American thing
  
  Hate is in every country.
  
  Ignorant take
- This is about as American as you can get.

Deport them to where even mexico doesn’t want US Mexican Americans in their territory unless they get dual citizenship. He will need 2/3 votes of senate and the house to amend the US constitution. Orange man dumb asf!
- He doesn't need shit. Stop assuming the law matters anymore.
  
  SURELY THIS TIME THE LAW WILL APPLY TO TRUMP!!1
- This isn't stupidity, this is inhumanity. They don't care if other countries don't want them once they have their concentration camps.
- Mexico said that if you are an American born of Mexican parents they'll give you your Mexican citizenship.

I think that’s too far. It’s such a good story, and it’s the way it’s always been in my lifetime before: you’re born in the USA, you get automatic US citizenship. No matter why your parents happen to be here. Maybe you have a layover in Miami on the way from Buenos Aires London, you go into labor and have the child at a hospital near the airport, that kid is a US citizen.
That makes sense to me (admittedly, probably because that’s the way it’s always been).
It’s like a nice little bonus for some people, and people can aim for it, and it’s a good story.
- Abortion rights was always how it had been in my lifetime, but look at us now.

Okay, we don't need to go adding extra stupid stuff. At the base level you're doing their normalization for them. At the high level we need an accurate idea of what's coming so we can prepare.
Watching the actual interview it's clear he makes some assertions. They don't want to separate families so they will send the US citizens with the family if the family wants. What this generally means is when the parents are undocumented but a kid is a citizen. This interview does not support denaturalizing people, (but he did do that in his first term), or forcing American citizens in a mixed status family who are adults to leave.
On the 14th the interviewer wanted and got an answer from an 80 year old partially senile man. His first, natural answer to the 14th amendment question was he would go to the people. He only noncommittally said he would look at an EO when then interviewer kept asking him but what about an executive order. If he's mentioned doing that before the proper way is to bring up what he said before and see if he still holds that position. Not repeating, "but what about an EO" 5 times until you get the funny and the headline writers can celebrate.
The open question is how will this highly suggestable man fare around the likes of Stephen Miller.

Things that aren't possible, at least under current legal frameworks.
I know that laws are only as good as they're enforced and all but barring wholesale collapse I find it hard to see Donny pulling that off.
- It is absolutely possible under America's legal framework. Mackenzie v Hare was the 1915 Supreme Court case, which ruled that a natural-born U.S. citizen woman could lose her citizenship by marrying a non-citizen man.
  The holding functionally stood until 1967, when there was a case called Afroyim v. Rusk, where the court held that natural born citizens cannot be stripped of their citizenship involuntarily. But that was a 5-4 decision in the Warren Court, in many regards, the most liberal supreme court in history. A decision that barely won a majority in a court drastically more liberal than this one is what's standing between the US today and a world where natural born citizens can have their citizenship deemed forfeit.
  
  I'm cool with brain drain -- if this actually happens a nice European country will happily open their doors to the educated (see Ireland, Spain already) and america will further collapse like it should.
- Well get ready to be surprised.

That would technically be everyone though? All Americans are descendant from immigrants.
- Native Americans and Hawaiians aren't immigrants.

first idea of his that i dont find completely stupid
- It's only a core tenet of our country after all
  
  as are guns. both are not necessarily beneficial
- You uh... okay with voiding parts of the Constitution with a vote in Congress? or Executive Order?
  
  im not american, but if youre trying to justify a system where it is extremely difficult to change laws and rules that are outdated or no longer feasable, be my guest.
- Why shouldn't someone born in a country get citizenship regardless of who their parents are?
  Why is punishing a child for what their parents did not completely stupid?
  That's some apartheid-level shit.
  
  why is this a punishment? do you realize that if you are born on a vacation of your parents, this prevents you from getting citizenship. is this logical to you?

171 comments

😬