Trump's Plan To End Birthright Citizenship Draws Fire In NYC

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump's legally dubious plan to limit birthright citizenship in the United States is certain to meet a fight from New York City, officials said.

In an interview released Tuesday, Trump said he plans to issue an executive order stripping citizenship from the children of undocumented immigrants. The move would likely rub up against the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, which extends citizenship to anyone born in the United States "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Such an order would alter the tenets of citizenship enshrined in the Constitution for 150 years. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reportedly said "a number of legal scholars" think Trump can do so through executive action — but city officials aren't buying it.

"The right of citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment. If Trump tries to touch it, we will fight and he will lose," Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, said Tuesday on Twitter. "His threats against the children of immigrants are a blatant attempt to divide and distract us before next week's election."

Trump's plan is seen by some as his latest effort to crack down on immigration. In his interview with the news website Axios, the president called it "ridiculous" that children born in the U.S. are automatically entitled to citizenship.

Trump falsely said that the U.S. is "the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits." At least 30 other countries grant birthright citizenship, including Canada and Mexico, according to the New York Immigration Coalition.

"Some Americans who want to remove birthright citizenship are fueled by xenophobic interpretations and bad faith comparisons to other country practices," said City Councilman Carlos Menchaca (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Council's Immigration Committee.

"Like the travel ban before it, this proposed executive order goes against the Constitution and our deepest democratic values."

Some conservatives argue the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause was not meant to apply to the children of unauthorized immigrants or those in the country on temporary visas, according to Axios. Republican lawmakers in Congress have introduced bills to apply such strictures to citizenship, though they did not move forward.

But previous challenges to the 14th Amendment as passed have failed, and the president cannot amend the Constitution through his executive power, the Immigration Coalition says.

In a Tuesday statement issued in three languages, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said the city "will fight back against this latest attack."

"This is not what we are about," he said.

(Lead image: President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Oct. 26, 2018. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)