Trump's "desperate end around" the Supreme Court with new attack on birthright citizenship; civil rights groups vow to fight back

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The ACLU's Cecilia Wang defended birthright citiznship at the Supreme Court.

Just five weeks after getting slapped down by the nation’s highest court, the Trump regime is launching a fresh offensive in its ongoing war against immigrants and who gets to be an "American."

On August 6, Donald Trump signed two new executive orders targeting birthright citizenship. The move is a transparent attempt to bypass the 14th Amendment by creating a tiered system of citizenship and labeling specific foreign individuals — a move civil rights advocates are calling a desperate end run around constitutional law.

Trump's overly broad Day 1 executive order was decisively struck down in a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling (Trump v. Barbara) issued last June. Now, the White House is trying a narrower, more insidious approach.

Round Two: The new executive orders

Trump’s latest strategy splits the policy into two surgical strikes designed to test the limits of executive power:

The first order carves out citizenship exclusions, dictating that children born on U.S. soil to foreign diplomats, embassy staff, designated "alien enemies," or parents accused of immigration fraud will no longer receive automatic citizenship. It also lays the groundwork to strip birthright citizenship in US territories if Congress provides legislative backing.

The second order commands federal agencies to actively block "birth tourism" by tightening visa restrictions on pregnant foreign visitors and preventing agencies from issuing travel visas under those conditions.

White House immigration henchman Stephen Miller and regime enablers maintain they are on firm legal footing, banking on the idea that regulating visas and defining national security terminology falls under executive authority over immigration.

Civil rghts groups fire back

The backlash from civil rights organizations was instantaneous, fierce, and unified across the progressive ecosystem. Advocates warning that these directives seek to create a vulnerable, unprotected legal class were quick to point out that a president cannot simply rewrite the supreme law of the land.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) whose top attorney Cecilia Wang successfully argued against the regime's lawyers before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Barbara, joined the fight, promising that this latest piece of executive overreach will meet the exact same fate in federal court as the last one. 

“The Supreme Court already decided this issue: Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. "No additional executive order can change the meaning of the Constitution. Any executive order that tries to rewrite birthright citizenship will meet the same fate as the last one.”

The Asian Law Caucus (ALC), co-counsel in Trump v. Barbara and the nation’s first Asian American legal and civil rights organization, issued a blistering condemnation. Executive Director Aarti Kohli stated:

“This is a cynical distraction from a flailing administration – and AAPI and immigrant families would pay the price. The Constitution – as the Supreme Court already affirmed in June – does not allow the government to pick and choose which children born in this country belong. This is a desperate end run around the Court’s decision based on made-up legal theories. The administration already lost once and it will lose again.

“Asian Law Caucus fought this administration’s attacks on birthright citizenship from day one. Our work carries forward the legacy of Fred Korematsu, whose family, like thousands of Japanese Americans, was branded a so-called “alien enemy” in 1942 and whose conviction we helped overturn in 1983. Today’s unlawful orders revive that same label to decide which babies count as American. Our commitment is clear: we will continue to defend birthright citizenship and protect the AAPI and immigrant families these actions target.”

Frontline community reactions

The ACLU and Asian Law Caucus were not alone in quickly condemning Trump's newest executive orders.

Stop AAPI Hate Coalition: The advocacy network warned that the administration’s new directives will explicitly fuel racial profiling, visa discrimination, and xenophobia. Representatives from the Stop AAPI Hate Action Center noted that drawing arbitrary lines around which parents "belong" invites dangerous local scrutiny for anyone who looks or sounds Asian, regardless of their actual legal status.

APIAVote: Leading voting rights and civic engagement groups stressed that the administration's "made-up legal theories" are a desperate play to suppress the growing political power and demographic footprint of communities of color.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice: Legal and civil rights affiliates expressed outrage that the executive branch is trying to overrule a definitive, weeks-old Supreme Court ruling. They criticized the orders as a "cynical distraction" meant to instill fear in immigrant neighborhoods, discourage families from seeking medical care, and disrupt local communities.

Birthright citizenship is simply defined in the US Constitution.

View from the edge

For Asian American, Pacific Islander (AAPI), and immigrant communities, resurrecting the term "alien enemies" isn't just an abstract legal debate — it is a visceral echo of historical exclusion acts and wartime targeting.

From the bedrock protection secured in 1898 by a Chinese American in United States v. Wong Kim Ark to the dark chapter of World War II internment, marginalized communities have had to repeatedly defend their right to belong. Drawing arbitrary lines around which parents "belong" invites dangerous racial profiling and xenophobia for anyone who looks or sounds foreign, regardless of their actual legal status.

Legal experts agree that while the White House is attempting to use narrower, security-focused language to dodge judicial review, denying citizenship to any child born on US soil directly violates the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause. Activists, civil rights coalitions, and legal teams are already preparing their briefs to halt the implementation of these orders before they can take root.

No matter how many executive orders the White House drafts, the fundamental law of the land remains unchanged. Trump just doesn't get it. He's not a king.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, views and chismis from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X, BlueSky or at the blog Views From the Edge. If you find this perspective interesting, please share.

As Trump prepares to leave Washington, talks about birthright citizenship heats up

As a final middle-finger to the Americans who didn't vote for him, the Donald Trump administration is reportedly planning to do away with birthright citizenship, according to The Hill.

The threatened executive order, is part of the slash-and-burn practice of the Trump administration before it gives up the power of the presidency. By throwing a monkey wrench in the machinery of government, the current administration hopes to gum up the works so that the incoming Joe Biden team would start up -- wasting their time, actually -- cleaning up the wreckage left behind by Trump and his people.

Besides Trump, the man who will miss his power the most is Stephen Miller, a senior advisor with links to white supremacists who is Trump's point man on immigration. Under Miller's advice, Trump has done everything he could to reduce immigration, the lifeblood that keeps the United States from stagnating; separated infants from their parents seeking refugee status, cut back work and student visas and implemented a Muslim ban.

Trump has threatened often about ending birthright citizenship. Drafts of a possible order have been circulating for some time, and there is now internal discussion about finalizing it before the Biden administration takes over in January, sources told The Hill.

The administration is aware the order would be promptly challenged in court, but officials would hope to get a ruling on whether birthright citizenship is protected under the 14th Amendment, according to one source familiar with the plans. Many lawmakers and experts have argued it is protected, but the courts have not definitively ruled on the issue and Trump hopes the conservative-heavy Supreme Court to rule in his favor.

“Since taking office, President Trump has never shied away from using his lawful executive authority to advance bold policies and fulfill the promises he made to the American people, but I won’t speculate or comment on potential executive action,” White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement.

Currently, anyone born in the United States are automatically given citizenship, even if the parents are here illegally or in the country with some other visa.

The language of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution clearly and explicitly provides for birthright citizenship. The amendment, adopted in 1866, provides that “[a]ll 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.” 

In 1898, the Supreme Court decided US v. Wong Kim Ark. Wong was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents in 1873. He lived in the U.S. all his life. His parents eventually left the country and he visited them in China in his late teens and again in his early twenties. 

When he tried to re-enter the U.S. in 1895, a customs agent refused him entry, stating that Wong was not a U.S. citizen based on the Chinese Exclusion Acts, federal laws that barred Chinese immigration, originally passed in 1882 and extended in various forms until 1943.

Wong challenged the exclusion, arguing that he was a U.S. citizen based on the 14th Amendment. Wong successfully argued that the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which barred immigrants, did not apply to him because he was American by virtue of birth on US soil.

Other areas where Trump's middle finger has been raised as he prepares to leave Washington includes: complete troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, securing more oil drilling leases in Alaska, weaken environmental standards and pushing more unqualified conservative judges onto the federal bench and eliminating the Affordable Care Act.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A word of caution, this is news sprinkled with opinion. Readers are encouraged to seek multiple news sources to formulate their own positions.