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The Supreme Court blunted the Trump administration’s offensive on immigration on Tuesday with a ruling affirming that almost everyone born in the United States is an American citizen.
The ruling, underscoring the concept known as ‘birthright citizenship,’ was a major defeat for a president who has sought not only to curb numbers on illegal immigration but to fundamentally reshape the political landscape on the issue.
That effort has encompassed everything from the “build the wall” chants that marked his first campaign for the presidency to the hyper-controversial raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that have been seen in his second term.
Trump has succeeded in reducing unauthorized migration at the southwestern border from a flood to a trickle. But ICE’s actions in the nation’s interior have proved far more controversial.
In the polling averages maintained by RealClearPolitics, a majority of the public now disapproves of Trump’s actions on immigration, 51 percent to 45 percent. Immigration had generally been his strongest issue during the 2024 election campaign against then-Vice President Harris.
Of course, there are other arrows in Trump’s quiver regarding immigration and, some of them have fared better before the courts. Trump has set the lowest refugee cap in history and at one point sought to ramp up efforts to turn back asylum-seekers.
The asylum-seeker measure got the assent of the Supreme Court last week.
But the defeat on birthright citizenship will carry a particular sting, given Trump’s intense and sustained criticism of the concept.
“Birthright Citizenship was not meant for people taking vacations to become permanent Citizens of the United States of America, and bringing their families with them, all the time laughing at the “SUCKERS” that we are!” he wrote on social media last year.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, cited the famous 1898 case of Wong Kim Ark, a man born in California to Chinese parents. There, the Supreme Court found that all U.S.-born people, with only very narrow exceptions, are citizens.
“We see no reason to depart from that view today,” Roberts wrote.
Concluding his Opinion, the chief justice wrote that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment had extended the promise of citizenship “to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
Advocates for immigrant groups estimate around 250,000 babies born in the U.S. each year would have been affected if the Court had acted to change the status quo.
Trump was, inevitably, displeased — even if not quite so volcanically as might have been expected. In one social media post, he sardonically congratulated China and its leader Xi Jinping “on their massive Birthright Citizenship WIN!” In another, he contended the Court’s decision was “too bad” for our country.
Other allies were harsher. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) blasted the ruling as “wrong, dangerous, and disastrous for American sovereignty and the American people” and said it represented “a sad day in the history of our republic” in a lengthy social media post.
Schmitt also contended that a constitutional amendment was necessary to remedy the situation. A similar call was made by his GOP colleague Sen. Mike Lee (Utah). Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the ruling a “travesty” and suggested that Congress should act.
Conservative ire seemed, if anything, to be heightened because the majority to uphold birthright citizenship was created by the conservative Roberts and the Trump-nominated Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining with the court’s three reliably liberal voices: Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, called the ruling “a tremendous betrayal of the republic” and contended that the ruling by the majority has “inflamed the all-out assault on our sovereignty and cheapened the sacred value of American citizenship.” Roberts, too, called for a constitutional amendment.
Trump seems to have little appetite for the onerous road that would have to be traveled to pass a constitutional amendment. On TruthSocial, he contended that such a move would be “long and unwieldy” and that instead “we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation.”
To be sure, the chances of a constitutional amendment passing seem vanishingly small, given that two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate would be required. Even if that were somehow achieved, 38 states would also have to ratify the change.
Conversely, however, it’s not clear what the legislative path would be to get what Trump wants, now that the Supreme Court has rendered its verdict.
The biggest symbolic defeat for the president lies in the broad message of the high court ruling. At almost every turn, Trump portrays migrants as seeking to game the system in various, nefarious ways. In relation to birthright citizenship in particular, Trump’s allies talk of “anchor babies” and immigration “tourism.”
Now, the Court, including two of its conservative members, has rebuffed those arguments and embedded even more firmly the right to birthright citizenship. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) acknowledged the ruling to be a “major defeat” for conservatives.
Trump pointed to other wins before the Supreme Court this term — and there have been several, even this week.
The Court expanded a president’s power to fire people from purportedly independent agencies within the executive branch in a ruling announced on Monday.
On Tuesday, it erased limits on the amount of money political parties can spend in conjunction with candidates, and it upheld the right of states to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s events.
But a defeat in the biggest case of them all is a sizable rebuke to Trump and his allies — and one that won’t be quickly forgotten.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
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