Illinois AG Kwame Raoul sues to stop President Trump's birthright citizenship order
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and attorneys general from three other states on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit seeking challenging President Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship in the U.S., just one of many fronts in which state officials are expected to square off with the Trump administration when it comes to immigration.
Raoul and the attorneys general from Arizona, Oregon, and Washington argue that Mr. Trump's move violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states "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 federal government has long interpreted that to mean the Constitution grants the right of citizenship to anyone born on American soil, regardless of their parents' immigration status.
"The language in the 14th Amendment is clear and unambiguous. If you are born in this country, you are a citizen of this country," Raoul said on Monday ahead of the lawsuit. "I, myself, am a child of immigrants from Haiti. So I'm a birthright baby."
The lawsuit seeks an injunction to prevent the federal government from enforcing Mr. Trump's order, and ultimately to invalidate it altogether.
"That one of Donald Trump's first day in office as president should be so diametrically opposed to our values as Americans is incredibly disappointing, though not surprising. The children born in the U.S. to immigrants are entitled to the rights and privileges that go along with U.S. citizenship," Raoul said. "We need to discuss bipartisan commonsense immigration reforms, but denying birthright citizenship, which dates back centuries and has been upheld twice by the U.S. Supreme Court, is not the solution. As Attorney General, and as the proud son of Haitian immigrants, I will continue to stand with my fellow attorneys general to defend the constitutional rights of all children born in this country."
On the first day of his second term in office on Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order seeking to deny birthright citizenship to any children born to parents who are unauthorized immigrants or temporary visa holders.
Nonetheless, after signing his executive order, the president has directed federal agencies to stop issuing passports, citizenship certificates. and other documents to children born in the U.S. to mothers in the country illegally and fathers who are not citizens or legal permanent residents, or to mothers who are temporary visa holders (and fathers who are not citizens or legal permanent residents).
The president has said his order, which is not retroactive, should be enforced within 30 days, but already faces multiple legal challenges. Aside from the challenge from Illinois, Oregon, Arizona, and Washington, a group of Democratic state attorneys general in 18 other states also have filed their own federal lawsuit to stop Mr. Trump's executive order. The American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant advocacy groups also have sued to stop the president's attempt to end birthright citizenship.
Raoul has noted birthright citizenship previously has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1898, in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that "Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization."
Raoul and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also have vowed to uphold the state's Illinois TRUST Act, which prohibits local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal authorities in civil immigration actions.
Both Pritzker and Raoul have noted that the TRUST Act does not stop local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in cases where a judge has signed a criminal warrant.
But in cases not involving criminal warrants, Pritzker said he will do everything in his power to protect law-abiding undocumented immigrants from being deported from the state.
"Convicted violent criminals who are undocumented should be removed from this country, period, end of sentence. That already is the law. There are people who have deportation orders as a result of that, and they should be removed. Nothing wrong with that," he said. "Ripping families apart, people who are law-abiding residents of the state of Illinois or of this country – law-abiding residents – ripping those families apart not acceptable to Americans, and we're gonna stand up for them in the state of Illinois."
