Washington (TDI): A federal judge in Seattle on Thursday blocked US President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing an executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, declaring it “blatantly unconstitutional”.
US District Judge John Coughenour at the urging of 4 Democratic-led states issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from implementing the order, which President Trump signed on Monday during his first day in office.
“This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” the judge told a lawyer with the US Justice Department defending the president’s order.
The order has already become the subject of 5 lawsuits by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, who termed it a flagrant violation of the US Constitution.
“Under this order, children being born today don’t count as US citizens,” Washington Assistant Attorney General Lane Polozola told Senior US District Judge John Coughenour at the start of a hearing in Seattle.
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Polozola — on behalf of Democratic state attorneys general from Washington State, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon— urged the judge to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the government from carrying out this important element of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
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The challengers argue that president’s action violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the US is a citizen.
Trump in his executive order directed US agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the US if neither their mother nor father is a US national or legal permanent resident.
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In a brief filed late on Wednesday, the US Justice Department termed the order an “integral part” of the president’s efforts “to address this country’s broken immigration system and the current crisis at the southern border”.
The lawsuit filed in Seattle has been progressing more swiftly than the four other cases brought over the executive order.
