The order has already been the subject of five lawsuits filed by human rights organizations and attorneys general from 22 states, who called it a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution.
A federal judge in the US city of Seattle has blocked the new President Donald Trump’s order that would deprive children born in the US of the right to automatic citizenship as unconstitutional.
Judge John Coffnour issued a temporary restraining order at the request of four Democratic-led states that prevented the government from enforcing the order, which Republican President Trump issued on Monday on his first day in the White House.
The order has already been the subject of five lawsuits by human rights organizations and attorneys general from 22 states, who called it a blatant violation of the US Constitution.
“Under this regulation, babies born today will not be considered U.S. citizens,” Assistant Washington State Attorney Lane Polozola told Judge Coffenour at the start of the hearing in Seattle.
Polozola, on behalf of the Democratic attorneys general of Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon states, requested the injunction to prevent the implementation of one of the key elements of Trump’s immigration policies, the Guardian reports.
At a press conference outside the court after the executive order was issued, Polozola said this was just the first step.
“But to hear a judge say from his bench that he has never seen anything so directly unconstitutional in his 40 years of practice shows how serious the problem is.” Polozola added.
She and others who have challenged Trump’s executive order say it violates the constitutional right to citizenship, the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
In his executive order, Trump directed U.S. authorities to deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. if neither parent is a U.S. citizen or has permanent residency status.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice called the order an “integral part” of the president’s efforts to “address the country’s broken immigration system and the crisis at the southern border.”
Under the order, any children born after February 19 whose mothers and fathers are neither citizens nor permanent residents of the United States can be deported and will not receive Social Security numbers and other government benefits. If it remains in effect, more than 150,000 children a year would be denied citizenship, Democratic-led states claim.
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