'Trump's attack on birthright citizenship serves to expand his authority by jeopardizing the status of all Americans'

LeMonde

27-06-2025

"Birthright. That's a big one," President Donald Trump mused out loud as he signed an executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship in America. On that, at least, all Americans can agree.
Although attacks on birthright citizenship are as old as the nation, President Trump's reasons for doing so break new ground. In the past, the primary goal was to exclude and deport disfavored immigrants. Today, the Trump administration is weaponizing citizenship not only to deport the unwanted, but also to control all those who remain.
In 2025, the United States is one of only 33 countries that automatically grant citizenship to nearly every child born within its borders, almost all in the Western Hemisphere. European countries either never adopted birthright citizenship or abandoned it in recent decades. The Trump administration wants to add the US to that long list.
But birthright citizenship is essential to American identity. In many ways, the story of birthright citizenship is the story of America.
A fraught issue
At its founding, the US was conflicted over citizenship – a fraught issue in a nation composed of indigenous tribes, European immigrants and their descendants, and the 20% of the population who were enslaved. In its infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court heldthat no Black person, slave or free, could ever be a citizen of the US. That decision helped to precipitate the Civil War. Slavery was abolished by that war's end, but the question of who qualified as an American remained.
In 1868, the US repudiated Dred Scott and the caste system it created by ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The first sentence of that amendment declares: "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."
The Fourteenth Amendment granted birthright citizenship to all, including the newly freed slaves and the children of immigrants. The only exceptions were a few discrete groups not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US due to their unique legal status, such as the children of diplomats and those born members of Native American tribes. Senator Jacob Howard, who proposed this language, claimed it "settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States."