USCIS Issues Plan to Fulfill Trump Birthright Citizenship Order

The agency that administers immigration benefits is making plans to carry out President Donald Trump‘s executive order restricting birthright citizenship, even though it’s currently blocked by the courts.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services released July 25 an implementation plan for the executive order defining which classes of immigrant children would be affected.

The order would limit automatic birthright citizenship, which was guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, to children with at least one parent who is a citizen or lawful permanent resident. It would exclude children whose parents are unlawfully present or in the US on a temporary status.

Immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary would include parolees, Temporary Protected Status holders, and deferred action recipients, USCIS said in the plan posted to its website. However, asylees, conditional permanent residents, and refugees wouldn’t fall under the lawful but temporary category, the agency determined.

The Department of Homeland Security and USCIS “will propose appropriate action to ensure that birth in the United States to individuals who possess lawful immigration status does not result in any negative immigration consequence for the child,” the plan said.

The executive order was blocked nationwide for the third time in less than a month last week. US District Court for the District of Massachusetts Judge Leo Sorokin said the government hadn’t showed it fully grasped “the potentially sweeping and disruptive effects of any misstep in implementation.”