Republican state AGs back Trump birthright citizenship order in court filing: 'Taxpayers are on the hook'

"If someone comes on a tourist visa to have an anchor baby, they are not under that original meaning of the United States Constitution," Iowa AG Brenna Bird told Fox News Digital in an interview Monday. Bird is the lead AG leading an amicus brief filing in support of the executive order on Monday.

"Oftentimes, when this has happened. It's the taxpayers that are paying for the health care through Medicaid or through hospitals, paying for care for someone to have a child, or the state child health insurance system as well," Bird said. "Each state has a system that helps kids without insurance, and so the taxpayers are on the hook here for all the costs."

Bird's amicus brief comes in response to 18 Democrat-led states who launched their own lawsuit, claiming the order is unconstitutional and "unprecedented." 

The first part of the 13-page brief claims that President Donald Trump's executive order complies with the "original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." The second portion claims Trump's order "reduces harm to the states."

"The lure of American citizenship motivates pregnant women to travel to America to give birth," the brief reads. "Some women, desperate to give birth in the United States, cross the border the day they deliver their baby." 

A border hospital administrator described witnessing pregnant women arriving at the hospital in active labor, still wet and shivering from crossing the river, determined to give birth in the U.S., the brief, which will be filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, says.

Trump's order, titled the "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 the individual's parents are illegal immigrants living in the U.S. or if their presence is lawful but temporary. It was among the first orders he signed after taking office in early January.

Fox News Digital's Haley-Chi-Sing contributed to this report.