Judge Blocks Trump Order On Birthright Citizenship

A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end the granting of American citizenship to children born to foreigners in the U.S.

During a hearing Thursday in Seattle, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order preventing Trump from carrying out his order aimed at ending birthright citizenship.

“This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” Coughenour said in court, according to The Associated Press.

Twenty-two states have joined lawsuits challenging Trump’s order as a violation of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause. Longstanding Supreme Court precedent confirms that, under the amendment, virtually all children born on U.S. soil are entitled to American citizenship.

Coughenour, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, said the precedent is so clear that he was surprised that the Trump administration had been able to find attorneys willing to defend the executive order’s legality. He began the hearing by the order “boggles the mind,” the AP reported.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Trump administration dispatched the acting head of DOJ’s Civil Division, Brett Shumate, to Seattle to try to stave off an immediate judicial ruling blocking the executive order. Shumate argued that there was no urgency for the judge to take any action because Trump’s order doesn’t kick in until Feb. 19.

“This Court should not rush to judgment on a manufactured timeline,” Shumate and other DOJ lawyers said in a court filing Wednesday night. They called the executive order “an integral part of President Trump’s recent actions, pursuant to his significant authority in the immigration field, to address this nation’s broken immigration system and the ongoing crisis at the southern border.”

The case Coughenour ruled in was brought by four states — Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington — arguing that Trump’s order violates the rights of people who live in those states. It’s one of at least six lawsuits stemming from Trump’s order and the first to actually go in front of a judge for emergency relief. In one of the other lawsuits, a judge in Maryland held an initial scheduling conference on Thursday. There, too, a DOJ lawyer sought to downplay the urgency of the litigation.

“There is a strong likelihood that Plaintiffs will success on the merits of their claims that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and Immigration and Nationality Act,” Coughenour wrote in his order. He said that if Trump’s directive took effect the states faced “increasing unrecoverable costs for providing medical care and social services” to residents.

Coughenour’s block on Trump’s order appears to apply nationwide and will be in effect for 14 days, but the states are seeking a longer-term injunction. The issue is expected to wind up at the Supreme Court within days or weeks.