On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed an order ending constitutionally recognized right of birthright citizenship. Thousands of expecting parents across the US suddenly had to consider that their babies would be born into a legal limbo.
Among them is Monica, a woman expecting her first child after escaping political persecution in Venezuela. If Trump’s order stands, Monica’s baby will be born stateless.
“I was very shocked,” she told the Guardian. “For me and for so many mothers. This is a right that is in the constitution of this country – so you cannot imagine that they would take it away just because.”
It was especially destabilizing for a couple who had wanted for years to become parents. “We always wanted to organize our lives to have children,” Monica said. “We had finally found some stability.”
Monica and her husband left Venezuela under threats of political persecution in 2019. She found out she was pregnant more than six years after arriving in the US, and almost couldn’t believe it. “I laughed, I cried, I thanked God.” Instead of going to the supermarket that day, she went out to buy a pair of tiny baby shoes – and left them out for her husband as a surprise. “He was not expecting that! But he was so excited.”
Two weeks later, Trump took office and signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship.
Seeking Venezuelan citizenship for their child would be impossible – both Monica and her husband were outspoken critics of their country’s authoritarian government and its autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, and contacting the government could put them in danger. Besides, there are no Venezuelan consulates in the US, which means there is no way for the couple to register their newborn.
Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship has faced immediate legal challenges. At least four major cases were filed in recent days, including one in which Monica is a plaintiff.
The Guardian is not publishing Monica’s surname, to protect her from retribution. Her last name is also omitted in the case in which she is challenging the order, along with four other pregnant immigrant women, and two immigrant advocacy groups, Casa and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (Asap). (Monica is herself also a member of Asap). The case has been filed in federal district court in Maryland by the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law.
On Thursday, a judge in Seattle temporarily blocked the implementation of the order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”. But questions about its implications remain, and families like Monica’s will remain in limbo as the case winds its way through the courts.
The text of the executive order leaves ambiguous exactly which children of which immigrants would be excluded from citizenship, said Leidy Perez, a policy and communications director at Asap. The order suggests that children born to parents who are in the US “unlawfully” or temporarily would be ineligible for citizenship. “Most of the folks on our staff are immigration attorneys, and we have decades of experience amongst all of us. And then we have this executive order and even we think it’s unclear,” she said.
Many people seeking asylum, for example, have been in the US for years and are on a path to stay permanently – could they be exempted from the order? “It’s just not clear,” said Perez. Other immigrants, including many undocumented people and those with a temporary protected status, have been living in the US for decades. “Is it even fair to say that’s temporary?” she said.
If the order is implemented, however, tens of thousands of children born in the US each year would no longer qualify for US citizenship. Many would be born undocumented, and potentially stateless, ineligible or unable to get citizenship from their parents’ home countries. This could create a whole new generation of people who are born into legal limbo.
These children would also become ineligible for many government programs that support low-income families, including food aid and subsidized health insurance. Newborns who need intensive care at the hospital would no longer be eligible for Medicaid.
A second lawsuit challenging the executive order, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several immigration advocacy groups, argues that the order violates the US constitution’s longstanding guarantee to birthright citizenship and legal precedents which “prevented the emergence of a hereditary underclass excluded from full participation in American life”.
Another legal challenge, brought by 22 Democratic-led states and the city of San Francisco – filed in Boston and Seattle – also argues that the order would burden local jurisdictions, leaving it to states and cities to absorb the costs of providing basic care for thousands of children left without federally subsidised care.
Such questions and hypotheticals consume Monica in between bouts of her morning sickness. “Where would I even register my son or daughter’s birth?” she wonders.
As she makes lists of all the baby supplies they’ll need, and picks out the colors for the nursery, she thinks: “I can name my child whatever name I want, but there will not be a birth certificate. Would you know if the baby was really born from me or not?”
Sometimes her mind jumps even further ahead – when her kid is old enough to ask, how will she explain that they don’t have a nationality? That they don’t belong to anywhere?
She and her husband have been waiting for six years in South Carolina while their asylum cases are processed through the profoundly backlogged immigration system. But in the meantime, they began been making a life. Monica has a medical degree from Venezuela, which she hopes will eventually be validated so she can practice in the US. Until then, she had been doing gig work for ride share and delivery apps. Her husband, meanwhile, had been working for a company that does plumbing, heating and air conditioning. A few years after arriving in the US, they were able to buy a house with their savings.
Since becoming pregnant, she said she had been swinging between joy and fear. “You give life to your child, but I believe they also give you the life you need, they give you strength that you never imagined you would have,” she said. “And if you don’t fight for your baby or your children, then who else can do it?”
