By Dan Catchpole, Nate Raymond (NS:)
SEATTLE (Reuters) – A federal judge blocked Donald Trump's administration on Thursday from implementing the Republican president's executive order limiting the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the United States, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, based in Seattle, issued a temporary restraining order at the request of four Democratic-led states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon — to prevent the administration from enforcing the order. Trump signed the order on Monday, his first day back in office.
The judge, appointed by former Republican President Ronald Reagan, dealt the first legal setback to the hardline immigration policies that are the focus of Trump's second term as president.
“Obviously we'll appeal,” Trump said of Coughenour's ruling.
Trump's executive order directed US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if their mother or father is not a US citizen or legal permanent resident.
“I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar can unequivocally declare this order to be constitutional,” the judge told the US Justice Department lawyer defending Trump's order. “It just boggles my mind.”
The states said Trump's order violates the right stipulated in the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which stipulates that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
“I've been on the bench for more than four decades,” Cohenour said of Trump's policy. “I can't remember another instance where the question asked was as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional system.”
Coughenour's order, announced after a brief hearing in a packed courtroom attended by other justices, blocks Trump's policy from being implemented nationwide for 14 days while the judge considers whether to issue a long-term preliminary injunction.
Under Trump's order, any children born in the United States after February 19, whose mothers and fathers are not US citizens or lawful permanent residents, will be subject to deportation and will be barred from obtaining Social Security numbers, various government benefits and the ability to age to work legally.
“Under this order, children born today are not considered U.S. citizens,” Len Polozola, assistant U.S. Attorney for Washington State, told the judge during the hearing.
Justice Department lawyer Brett Shumate said Trump's action was constitutional and called any injunction blocking it “grossly inappropriate.” But before Shumate finished responding to Polozola's argument, Coughenour said he signed the temporary restraining order.
“Defend hard”
The Justice Department plans to file papers next week urging the judge not to issue a longer injunction, Shumate said. A Justice Department spokesperson said the department plans to continue to “vigorously defend” Trump's order.
“We look forward to presenting a fully objective case to the court and to the American people, who are eager to see our country’s laws enforced,” the spokesman said.
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, said he saw no reason to expect the Justice Department to succeed in overturning Coughenour's ruling on appeal, even if the matter goes to the US Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three appointed justices. By Trump.
“You are an American citizen if you were born on American soil,” Brown said. “Nothing the president can do will change that.”
According to Democratic-led states, more than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually if Trump were allowed to run.
Since Trump signed the order, at least six lawsuits have been filed challenging it, most of them by civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states.
Democratic state attorneys general said understanding of the Constitution's citizenship clause was cemented 127 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that children born in the United States to noncitizen parents were entitled to U.S. citizenship.
The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868 in the wake of the American Civil War, overturned the Supreme Court's infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision that declared the Constitution's protections did not apply to enslaved blacks.
In a brief filed late Wednesday, the Justice Department called the order “an integral part” of Trump's efforts “to address this nation's broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border.”
On Tuesday, 36 of Trump's Republican allies in the US House of Representatives separately introduced legislation to restrict automatic citizenship only for children born to US citizens or legal permanent residents.
