New Mexico joins legal battle against Trump's order limiting citizenship for US-born children

New Mexico’s attorney general and those of 17 other states sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday to block an executive order that questions a decades-old guarantee of citizenship for all U.S.-born children.

Trump’s 700-word executive order, issued Monday, argues that the U.S. Constitution does not automatically confer citizenship to all children born in the United States — a decades-old principle known as birthright citizenship.

The federal lawsuit contends that the order is an unconstitutional attempt to “strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship” based on the immigration status of their parents.

Birthright citizenship, enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, confers citizenship on “all persons born” and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The amendment was adopted in 1868 to guarantee citizenship for African Americans.

Trump’s order excludes children born to mothers who are not in the U.S. legally and whose fathers are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

It also bars citizenship to children whose mothers are in the country legally but on a temporary basis, such as work or student visas, and whose fathers are not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a statement announcing the suit that the principle of birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and “is not a privilege to be granted or revoked by political whim.”

Eighteen states, plus the cities of Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, filed suit in federal court to block the order.

Four other states filed a separate federal suit challenging Trump’s order. They are Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington.

“President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship is a direct attack on the Constitution and the fundamental rights it guarantees to every child born on American soil,” Torrez said.

The order applies only to children born in the United States after 30 days from the date of the order, or Feb. 19.

The suit argues that if the order is allowed to stand, children born after that date “will lack any legal status in the eyes of the federal government. They will all be deportable, and many will be stateless.”

Uncertain is how many New Mexico-born children might be affected by the order.

About 9% of New Mexico residents are foreign-born and 5.9% of its U.S.-born residents lived with at least one immigrant parent in 2022, according to the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

The nonprofit estimates that 113,000 U.S.-born residents in New Mexico lived with at least one immigrant parent in 2022. About 27,000 U.S.-citizen children lived with at least one undocumented parent that year.

The suit seeks to invalidate the order and block actions to enforce it.

“The President has no authority to rewrite or nullify a constitutional amendment or duly enacted statute,” the suit contends.

Trump’s order argues that the 14th Amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”

New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said Tuesday that presidents might have broad authority but are not kings.

“The president cannot, with a stroke of a pen, write the 14th Amendment out of existence, period,” he said.

In addition to New Mexico and the two cities, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin joined the lawsuit to stop the order.