The Trump administration started digging out the foundation for their case against birthright citizenship. Everyone expected one federal level court or another to put a hold on Trump’s controversial executive order. The first round of court filings provide a glimpse at sound legal reasoning which could haul up the baby anchor. It’s clear to everyone involved that SCOTUS will need to have the final say. The important thing to know is that the issue isn’t as cut and dried as Democrats think it is.
Administration offers substance
The Trump administration is already in court supporting the president’s decision to end automatic “birthright citizenship.” Almost the instant he signed the executive order liberal lawyers went running to the courthouse.
A left-leaning judge in Seattle was the first with a chance to slap down a hold. He banged it with his gavel before it had a chance to get away.
The judge listened patiently to administration lawyers but clearly had his mind made up. Federal attorneys argued that anchor babies are “not subject to” American jurisdiction.
That’s the crucial phrase in the 14th Amendment which has migrants from everywhere dreaming of beating the immigration system.
As the administration pointed out on January 22, “ample historical evidence shows that the children of non-resident aliens are subject to foreign powers.” That, they insist, means anchor babies “are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are not constitutionally entitled to birthright citizenship.”
So what if SCOTUS said otherwise in 1898. Things have changed since then and it’s time for SCOTUS to take another look.

Wong Kim Ark
Democrats are of the opinion that the issue was settled once and for in in their favor back in 1898. That’s when the United States Supreme Court put the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark under the constitutional microscope. On the surface, he seems to be your typical anchor baby. Wong was “born in San Francisco to parents who were both Chinese citizens.”
“At age 21, he took a trip to China to visit his parents. When he returned to the United States, he was denied entry on the ground that he was not a U.S. citizen.” SCOTUS said otherwise, 6 to 2. The way the administration sees it, the dissent opinion left the door open for further consideration.
The whole key to the SCOTUS decision in 1898 was the phrase in the 14th Amendment, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Parents who illegally sneak across the border in defiance of immigration laws, simply to drop a baby which gets automatic citizenship, doesn’t make the baby “subject” to American jurisdiction.

The administration argues that SCOTUS didn’t have the full picture to consider at that time. The minority opinion, drafted by Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller left the door open for Trump to kick in now.
The first thing Justice Fuller noted was the main intent of the amendment was to clarify that former slaves are bona fide American citizens. “The main object of the opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes.” The Trump administration relies on Fuller’s observation that to be “completely subject” to “the political jurisdiction of the United States is to be in no respect or degree subject to the political jurisdiction of any other government.”
He goes on to say the children of aliens “must necessarily remain themselves subject to the same sovereignty as their parents, and cannot, in the nature of things, be, any more than their parents, completely subject to the jurisdiction of such other country.” The question SCOTUS will need to revisit is whether a fetus smuggled into the country is subject to our jurisdiction or not. Trump and his administration says border jumping foreigners are dreaming if they think that’s true.