Northeast Ohio immigration attorneys are watching closely the court battle between President Donald Trump’s administration and a handful of states over efforts to end birthright citizenship.
On Thursday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump's executive order that declared babies born in the U.S. to migrants in the country temporarily or without legal status would no longer automatically be U.S. citizens.
Trump signed an executive order shortly after being inaugurated Monday.
Birthright citizenship means anyone born in the country receives citizenship regardless of their parent’s immigration status. Some conservatives argue that it acts as a magnet for illegal immigration.
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution grants citizenship to people "born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." For decades, that has been interpreted to grant American citizenship to everyone born in the U.S.
“Not just disappointed. I’m angry. I’m sad,” said Margaret Wong, an immigration attorney who opened her Cleveland firm more than 50 years ago. "This is not America."
Eliminating birthright citizenship will cause practical problems because babies need birth certificates to get travel documents required to travel to whatever country where that baby’s parents are citizens, said Wong, herself an immigrant from Hong Kong.
“I can tell you now, China, India, are not going to issue a passport for these children,” Wong said. “Where are these children going to go? They’ll be here.”
The issue will likely be determined by the U.S. Supreme Court, said David Leopold, a partner at UB Greensfelder LLC and a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
“The constitution couldn’t be clearer,” he said. “Mr. Trump was elected president. He wasn’t elected king. In our country, the president does not get to rule by fiat, by executive order … the president cannot change the constitutional rule by issuing a piece of paper.”
He too pointed to logistics problems he said could be created by the executive order.
“A child is born in a hospital in Ohio, but is not a citizen, what is that child? Is that child stateless? Is that child undocumented? Is Immigration and Customs Enforcement going to have to be stationed at hospital maternity wards and delivery rooms?” Leopold said. “I can come up with all kinds of crazy hypotheticals, and it’s unfathomable to think that a situation like that could work.”
Dozens of countries, including Canada and Mexico, offer birthright citizenship, according to the Library of Congress. Although a number of countries have reversed the policy, according to the Washington Post.
It is difficult to know the number of Ohio children that might be affected by the change if it were to go into effect, the attorneys said. About 250,000 babies were born in the United States to unauthorized immigrant parents in 2016, down from a peak of about 390,000 in 2007, analysis by the Pew Research Center shows.
In his second campaign, Trump promised to curb illegal immigration, which polls show was an important issue to many voters in Northeast Ohio. Nearly 70% of Northeast Ohio voters called illegal immigration a “major issue,” according to the Northeast Ohio Voter Voices poll.
Fewer migrants reached the U.S.-Mexico border in 2024, according to Pew data. Border Patrol recorded a 77% decline in the number of encounters from a peak of almost 250,000 December 2023, to about 58,000 in August 2024.
