MAGA law group files briefs in support of Trump executive order ending birthright citizenship

Trump's order titled "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship" states that "the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States" when that person's parents are either unlawfully present in the U.S. or when the parents' presence is lawful but temporary.

The briefs - which were filed in the federal courts for the Western District of Washington and the District of Massachusetts - argue that based on the "text and history" of the 14th Amendment, the Constitution does not confer citizenship on the children of unlawfully present aliens. The briefs claim that citizenship in the U.S. is a political right, not an automatic entitlement.

The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868 and was designed to extend citizenship to African-American former slaves. The amendment states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

"This executive order is constitutional and legally valid," said Epstein. "The Constitution makes clear that it is not the 'natural born citizen clause.' It is a 'natural born and subject to the jurisdiction thereof clause.' And we can't just scratch out 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof.' 'Jurisdiction thereof' means something; it means you are a loyal subject to American jurisdiction and if you're a disloyal subject - which is clearly someone whose parents entered here illegally - it means you don't believe in the law."

"Congress has not specifically authorized that any individual born to illegal aliens on U.S. soil is by definition a citizen. That's nowhere in the statute," he explained. "If Congress decided to pass a law and the courts said it was constitutional, and it said that, in fact, if you're born on American soil, you're a citizen, well, then, we're bound by that law and the Supreme Courts and the federal courts affirming that. But that's just not the law."

Epstein said that the U.S. policy of extending citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, including those born to illegal immigrants, breaks with American tradition and disrupts the rule of law.

"There's a lot that hangs in the balance here," he explained. "If we have an interpretation of the 14th Amendment that says that anyone born here is like African-Americans who have a history of slavery or of terrible things, then we actually dilute that American tradition of enfranchising the rights of the descendants of former slaves and that is not what the 14th Amendment was designed to do."