Letters
Rewrote Constitution
In the Dred Scott decision (1857), the Supreme Court declared that a "free negro of the African race ... is not a 'citizen.'" The 14th Amendment to the Constitution repudiated that disgrace. The Amendment now declares: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens."
Yet the current administration's Executive Order 14160 denies citizenship to U.S.-born children if the child's parents' presence here was temporary or unlawful. To justify that constitutional hallucination, the crack in the 14th Amendment they've conjured up is: "subject to the jurisdiction."
Children of foreign diplomats aren't citizens because they're not subject to U.S. law. But children otherwise born here? Of course they're subject to U.S. law. The U.S. can deport their families, and now them, too. That's jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court, in Trump v. CASA, dodged the constitutional question, limiting relief to actual plaintiffs only. The EO now applies everywhere else, until it is struck down one plaintiff at a time. Death by 1,000 cuts. Many won't have the means to sue.........
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