Judge Blocks Trump's Citizenship Order, So POTUS Lets Him Know Exactly What's Coming Next
President Donald Trump reacted on Thursday after a federal judge blocked his executive order to refuse the issuance of documents acknowledging birthright citizenship.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, who is based in Seattle, paused the order after contending that the new commander-in-chief’s take on the Fourteenth Amendment was fallacious, per a report from the New York Post.
“I am having trouble understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this order is constitutional,” Coughenour told Justice Department attorney Brett Shumate during arguments over a lawsuit brought by the states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon.
“It just boggles my mind,” he added.
But Trump made clear that his team would continue to fight for that particular immigration policy.
“Obviously, we’ll appeal it,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office, per the Post.
“They put it before a certain judge, in Seattle, I guess, right? And, uh, there’s no surprises with that judge,” Trump remarked.
Coughenour indeed had harsh words for the executive action, which says the Fourteenth Amendment has “always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States” but who were not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one,” the judge declared.
“This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” he emphasized.
The administration policy now faces a 14-day temporary restraining order while Coughenour evaluates whether to issue a preliminary injunction.
The order was one of several signed by Trump to handle rampant illegal immigration.
The document contended that the Fourteenth Amendment, which “rightly repudiated the Supreme Court of the United States’s shameful decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford” issued in 1857, was never “interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”
Trump therefore ordered that “no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities” for people who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen.
That includes “when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth,” or in other cases “when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”
There are four other lawsuits seeking to challenge the birthright citizenship order.
All of those challenges are still moving elsewhere in the court system.
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