NEW YORK, CMC – Caribbean immigration advocates and legislators on Friday condemned the United States Supreme Court’s decision to partially stay preliminary injunctions on President Donald Trump’s executive order regarding birthright citizenship for Caribbean and other immigrants, sending the issue back to lower courts for further action.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on Friday sided with Trump in Trump v. CASA, granting his request to narrow the multiple nationwide injunctions that had blocked his Executive Order to end birthright citizenship.
“By narrowing nationwide injunctions, the court has opened the door for Trump to advance his dangerous and unconstitutional attempt to end birthright citizenship –a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment for more than 150 years,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), an umbrella coalition of over 200 immigrant and refugee groups in New York, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
“This same Supreme Court never thought to say that the many national injunctions and stays that it upheld against the Biden administration were outside the judiciary’s power to enact,” he added. “Today’s ruling shows that the Supreme Court now operates as an extension of Donald Trump’s political will, empowering Trump to escalate his anti-immigrant agenda with fewer legal checks and threatening the safety, dignity, and future of millions of Americans.
“Trump has made it clear that he will stop at nothing to tear immigrant families apart and rewrite the very meaning of who gets to belong in this country,” Awawdeh continued. “We will not stand by as Trump and his enablers undermine our Constitution to try to erase these rights of our communities.”
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) – chaired by Caribbean-American Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who represents the 9th Congressional District in New York – also condemned the US Supreme Court’s ruling.
“By limiting the federal judiciary’s ability to issue nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration’s extremist and authoritarian policies, the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court is once again bending the law to serve President Trump instead of defending the Constitution and the American people,” said CBC in a statement.
“While this ruling makes it harder for courts to block the unlawful policies of the Trump administration fully, the judicial fight to protect birthright citizenship and our fundamental rights will continue,” CBC vowed. “For more than a century, a cornerstone of our law has been that those born on US soil are American citizens. President Trump’s unlawful attempts to nullify birthright citizenship are in clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which established African Americans as equal citizens under the law.
“President Trump has absolutely no authority to write American citizens out of the Constitution unilaterally, and any challenge to that notion is utterly fanciful,” it continued.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said the US Supreme Court’s decision on Friday “is a profound and disappointing setback for the families who now face tremendous uncertainty and danger, for the millions of people who rely on the courts to protect their constitutional rights, and for the fundamental rule of law.
“Every child born on US soil is a citizen of this country, no matter which state they are born in,” she said. “This has been the law of the land for more than a century.”
But James said the case “is not over,” expressing confidence that the case defending birthright citizenship will ultimately prevail.
“My heart breaks for the families whose lives may be upended by the uncertainty of this decision,” she said. “My fellow attorneys general and I will continue to defend the Constitution and the common values that unite us.”
On January 21, Attorney General James and 18 other states sued to block the president’s “unconstitutional executive order” purporting to end birthright citizenship.
On February 13, the court granted the coalition’s motion for a preliminary injunction, which the US Court of Appeals later upheld for the First Circuit.
On Friday, the US Supreme Court, the country’s highest court, partially stayed the preliminary injunction, sending the issue back to the lower courts to narrow the scope of their order.
According to the Washington-based Cato Institute, the 14th Amendment became part of the US Constitution 150 years ago, in July 1868.
Among other things, the institute said the amendment “enshrined our traditional common law practice of granting citizenship to those born in the United States who are subject to its laws—specifically, it guaranteed that the recently freed slaves and their descendants would be citizens.”
The institute also said the 14th Amendment applied to the children of immigrants, including Caribbean immigrants, “as its authors and opponents understood at the time.”
But the Cato Institute noted that Trump’s immigration position paper “famously endorsed an end to birthright citizenship.”
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