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uring his campaign for president in 2024, Donald Trump called for an end to birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. He kept his promise on the first day of his second term with an executive order.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States ... with all of those benefits,” Trump said in 2018 during an interview with Axios. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

In 1993, then-Nevada Sen. Harry Reid—the future Democratic Senate majority leader — said, speaking  about birthright citizenship, “No sane country would do that.” Reid changed his position in 1999 after pressure from the AFL-CIO.

On Jan. 23, the day after Trump signed an executive order banning birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, a federal judge temporarily blocked it calling the executive order “blatantly unconstitutional.”

Is it? That’s the question that many believe the Supreme Court will now be tasked to decide.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, “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.” It was ratified on July 9, 1868. 

I had never questioned the 14th Amendment until Trump brought it up. I was taught in school that everyone born in the U.S. was a citizen, and I took this for granted.

Here is the history lesson. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were submitted to the states after the Civil War as part of Congress’s Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens formerly enslaved, including granting them citizenship.

In the 1857 Dred Scott v Sandford case, Scott, an escaped slave, was denied his suit for freedom because he was not considered a U.S. citizen. The 14th Amendment nullified this ruling.

The 14th Amendment’s words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof “are a sticking point. Those arguing for birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants claim they refer to the geographic reach of U.S. law.

Interestingly, that is not the meaning held by the senators who drafted the amendment. Sen Jacob Howard, the man who introduced the Citizenship clause said that the clause “will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners [or] aliens.” Sen. Lyman Trumbull further explained that “subject to the jurisdiction” means “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.”

This wording meant that Indians born in the U.S. on reservations were not granted citizenship until 1924 because they were under the jurisdiction of a tribe.

Democrats suing to keep giving citizenship to illegal immigrants site Wong Kim Ark. He was born in 1873, on American soil to Chinese immigrants. After Wong left the U.S. to visit China he was denied reentry onto U.S. soil. He sued, and the case went to the Supreme Court. He won.

“The Fourteenth Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States,” wrote Associate Justice Horace Gray in the majority opinion.

The justices ruled in his favor because, at the time of his birth in San Francisco, his parents were “permitted by the United States to reside here.”

This case did not say anything about citizenship for children of non-resident aliens.

According to Eric Ruark, Director of Research for NumbersUSA, “It’s crucial to note that, at the time of Wong’s birth, there was no concept of illegal immigration. It wasn’t until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that Congress first restricted the entry and naturalization of foreigners based on nationality or numerical quotas.”

It is going to be interesting to see how the Supreme Court rules on this case. 

For those saying Trump does not have this authority, the U.S. Senate introduced a bill on Jan. 31, titled the “Birthright Citizenship Act of 2025.” This bill would end the practice of birthright citizenship on anyone born in the U.S. of parents who are either illegal aliens or who are in the country legally on a temporary basis.

Trump was wrong. There is one other country with this insane policy for non-resident aliens — Canada.