On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued executive order No. 14,160 titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which declared that individuals born in the United States are not U.S citizens at birth if their parents lack sufficient legal status (Oyez). The order directs federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born to parents without permanent legal status after February 20th, 2025 (Oyez). With an estimated 200,000 children born annually to undocumented parents in the United States (ACLU), the stakes of this order are enormous. Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, confirmed by over a century of Supreme Court precedent, and cannot be revoked by presidential decree. Executive Order 14,160 represents precisely the kind of executive overreach that courts and civil society must act to restrain. 

The fourteenth amendment states that “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” (U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment, Library of Congress, 1868). Trump’s executive order relies on a strategic misreading of  “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause to claim that the children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders fall outside of its scope. This argument is deeply flawed given that undocumented immigrants and visa holders are undeniably subject to American laws and can be arrested, tried, and deported under U.S law. 

The Supreme Court addressed the meaning of the contested provision in relation to birthright citizenship in the 1898 court case “United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco to parents who were both Chinese citizens (Oyez). When he was 21, he visited China, and upon his return he was denied entry on the grounds that he was not a US citizen (Oyez). In a 6-2 decision, the Court ruled in favor of Ark, asserting that the citizenship clause of the fourteenth amendment automatically makes him a U.S citizen. This decision was further codified by the Nationality Act of 1940, which states that individuals born in the United States are automatically US citizens (Hyde, 1941). 

The ACLU immediately sued Trump for the order, and represented three families in the trial on April 1st, with a decision expected by mid-year. One representative is Barbara, a Honduran asylum applicant whose child was born in October 2025 (Oyez). Another is Susan, a Taiwanese woman with a student visa whose daughter was born in April 2025, whose passport application was in progress at the time of the suit (Oyez). The third representative is Mark, a Brazilian man who applied for permanent residence whose son was born in March 2025, and initially received a US passport before the matter was brought to further contestation (Oyez). Should the court uphold the order, their children will be stateless and without rights. 

Stateless people are not born, they are created. So, what happens if the court rules against birthright citizenship? A stateless person is someone who does not enjoy citizenship in any country, meaning they do not enjoy any institutional human rights protections provided by citizenship. At the end of 2019, the UN High Commissioner of Refugees counted 4.2 million stateless persons, and the acceptance of the executive order would create 200,000 stateless children per year– becoming the largest contributor to this disenfranchisement (United States Department of State, 2020). Without citizenship, stateless people have no legal protection, no right to vote, and often lack access to education, employment, health care, registration of birth, marriage or death, and property rights (United States Department of State, 2020).  

The deeper issue at hand for American Democracy is the abuse of executive orders to surpass congressional lawmaking, a key aspect of executive aggrandizement. Executive orders are lawful so long as they are within the domain of the president’s granted powers, as outlined in Article II of the US Constitution: enforcement of federal laws, act as commander in chief, make treaties, and appoint officials (Executive Orders: An Introduction, 2025). This executive order does not enforce any existing laws, rather it seeks to overturn a 128 year judiciary precedent without congressional oversight. Trump has a pattern of breaching the constraints of his executive power through executive orders, putting states at the forefront of holding the administration accountable (States United Democracy Center, 2025). The United States Democracy Center found that Trump has accelerated his use of these orders in his second term, with a record breaking 217 executive orders in the first ten months of his second term– 7.2 times the historical average and more than 3.4 times the number used by President Biden in the same period (States United Democracy Center). The report also found that only 21% of Americans believe that his use of executive orders are within the normal constraints of executive power (States United Democracy Center). If the President of the United States does not represent his citizens, who does he represent? 

Executive Order 14,160 is a constitutional crisis that threatens to manufacture statelessness for hundreds of thousands of children born on American soil. The Supreme Court has already spoken clearly through Wong Kim Ark and over a century of precedent: birthright citizenship is not a privilege granted by the executive branch but a right guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. If left unchecked, this order would not only strip children like Barbara’s, Susan’s, and Mark’s of their legal identity, but would signal that the Constitution itself is subject to the whims of presidential decree.

References

8 FAM 301.6 NATIONALITY ACT OF 1940. Fam.state.gov. https://fam.state.gov/FAM/08FAM/08FAM030106.html

American Civil Liberties Union. (2026, April). ACLU Comment on Trump Plan to Attend Supreme Court Arguments in Birthright Citizenship Case | American Civil Liberties Union. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-on-trump-plan-to-attend-supreme-court-arguments-in-birthright-citizenship-case

Executive Orders: An Introduction. (2025). Congress.gov. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46738

Hyde, C. C. (1941). The Nationality Act of 1940. American Journal of International Law, 35(2), 314–319. https://doi.org/10.2307/2192266

Oyez. (2019). United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Oyez. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/169us649

States United Democracy Center. (2025, December 2). NEW ANALYSIS: Trump’s Use of Executive Orders in Second Term Is Unprecedented, Unilateral, and Unpopular – States United Democracy Center. States United Democracy Center. https://statesunited.org/executive-order-report/

U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment | Resources | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress. (1868, July 9). Congress.gov. https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/

United States Department of State. (2020, December). Statelessness – United States Department of State. United States Department of State. https://2017-2021.state.gov/other-policy-issues/statelessness/