El caso de la ciudadanía por derecho de nacimiento en la Corte Suprema toca de cerca a esta madre inmigrante

WASHINGTON (AP) — Una de las primeras cosas que hizo una emigrante argentina después de que su hijo naciera en Florida el año pasado fue tramitarle un pasaporte de Estados Unidos.

Ella vio el pasaporte como una prueba tangible de que él es estadounidense. Pero ahora personas como ella están peleando legalmente por la orden ejecutiva del presidente Donald Trump que negaría la ciudadanía estadounidense a los niños nacidos en Estados Unidos de personas que están en el país ilegalmente o de forma temporal.

“Es curioso porque en realidad lo reservé para su cita de solicitud de pasaporte incluso antes de que naciera”, dijo la mujer, de 28 años, mientras su hijo, ahora de 7 meses, dormía cerca. Habló con The Associated Press bajo condición de anonimato, exigida por sus abogados, por temor a posibles represalias de la administración republicana si se la identificara públicamente.

“Diría que definitivamente me siento aliviada de que, al menos, él esté protegido”, dijo.

La Corte Suprema escuchará el miércoles argumentos sobre si la orden de Trump, firmada el 20 de enero de 2025, su primer día de regreso al cargo, se ajusta a la Decimocuarta Enmienda posterior a la Guerra Civil y a una ley federal de 86 años que se ha entendido ampliamente que hace ciudadanos a todos los nacidos en el país, con excepciones limitadas para los hijos de diplomáticos extranjeros y de ejércitos invasores. Cada tribunal que ha considerado el asunto ha encontrado que la orden es ilegal y ha impedido que entre en vigor.

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The call to repeal birthright citizenship is part of the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on immigrants that has included stepped-up deportations, drastic reductions in the number of refugees allowed into the U.S., suspension of asylum at the border and stripping temporary legal protections from people fleeing political and economic instability.

The case presents another test for a high court that has allowed some anti-immigration efforts to continue, even after lower courts had blocked them. The case before the court comes from New Hampshire, where U.S. District Judge Joseph N. LaPlante ruled that the order “likely violates” both the Constitution and federal law.

Constitución vs. orden ejecutiva

The first sentence of the 14th Amendment, the Citizenship Clause, makes citizens of “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The case turns on the meaning of the final phrase about jurisdiction, which also was used in citizenship laws enacted in 1940 and 1952.

Trump’s view, asserted in the order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” and backed by some conservative legal scholars, is that people here illegally or temporarily are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore their U.S.-born children are not entitled to citizenship.

The court should use the case to set straight “long-enduring misconceptions about the Constitution’s meaning,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.

In that regard, Sauer likened the case to the seminal 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in public schools, and the landmark 2008 Heller case, which declared that people have a constitutional right to keep guns for self-defense.

Last year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the Trump administration’s effort to defend the order “an impossible task in light of the Constitution’s text, history, this Court’s precedents, federal law, and Executive Branch practice.”

Sotomayor was joined by the other two liberal justices in a dissent from a decision by the court’s six conservative justices that used an earlier round of the birthright citizenship dispute to limit the use of nationwide injunctions by federal judges.

Challenging Trump

The pregnant mothers and their advocates challenging the order, as well as lower-court judges who have blocked it, have said the Trump administration’s arguments lack merit.

“We have the president of the United States trying to radically reinterpret the definition of American citizenship,” said Cecillia Wang, the American Civil Liberties Union legal director who will face off against Sauer on Wednesday.

More than one-quarter of a million babies born in the U.S. each year would be affected by the executive order, according to research by the Migration Policy Institute and Pennsylvania State University’s Population Research Institute.

While Trump has largely focused on illegal immigration in his rhetoric and actions, the birthright restrictions also would apply to people who are legally in the United States, including students and applicants for green cards, or permanent resident status.

‘The most beautiful thing’

The woman from Argentina said she came to the U.S. in 2016 on a visa to attend college and has since applied for a green card.

She described a moment of panic following the court’s June ruling, when it was at least possible that the restrictions could take effect, particularly in states such as Florida that had not challenged Trump’s order. Lower-court rulings over the summer ensured the order remained on hold and set up the current Supreme Court case.

On top of the predictable worries of a first-time mother, she said, “I never thought that, you know, so close to the end of my pregnancy that I would have to be even thinking about … the executive order and how it would have impacted my baby.”

She has not reconsidered her decision to come to the United States or her desire to stay, she said, as her son stirred.

“And so nothing that happens, politically or otherwise, would have changed my views of the country, I mean, because it gave me the most beautiful thing I have today, which is my family,” she said.

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