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Explainer: Trump Administration Defies Court Order on Halting Deportations
By: Alton Wang
Guide
President Trump’s executive order concerning birthright citizenship is an unlawful, ahistorical, and illogical attack on the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the clear and unambiguous meaning of the 14th Amendment in 1898 and has not reversed itself in the intervening 127 years. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the American-born child of Chinese immigrant parents was denied re-entry into the United States by the collector of customs in the Port of San Francisco following a trip to China on the basis of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the mistaken belief that he was not an American citizen. Wong Kim Ark appealed this decision, arguing that his birth in San Francisco in 1873 granted him American citizenship under the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court agreed with Wong’s argument, holding that the amendment granted citizenship to any person born in the United States who was not the child of a foreign diplomat at the time of their birth.
“Defining ‘American’” by James C. Ho provided much of the history of the 14th Amendment debate in this article.
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