Birthright citizenship is not up for negotiation

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week on whether a president can deny citizenship to children born in the United States based on their parents’ immigration status. The case centers on a Trump executive order that attempts to narrow who qualifies as American at birth.

The Constitution is clear. The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to people born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. That has been settled law for more than a century.

This challenge is not about legal ambiguity. It is about whether that guarantee can be rewritten to exclude certain families.

This country has already answered who belongs.

In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war between the United States and Mexico. The United States took a vast portion of Mexico’s territory, including land that is now part of Colorado and much of the Southwest. The people living there did not cross into the United States. The border crossed them.

The federal government claimed that land, claimed authority over the people on it, and extended citizenship as part of that expansion. That history does not define every Latino family in Colorado. It does show that citizenship in the United States has never been based only on origin. It has been defined by law and constitutional guarantees.

Denying citizenship to children born here would create a system where belonging depends on the status of your parents. It would make citizenship conditional. It would allow the government to redraw the line of who counts based on politics.

The current attack by the Trump administration is a rejection of a plural America.

It targets immigrant families and Latino communities directly. It signals that some children born in this country are less American than others. That is the logic behind this executive order, and it should be named clearly: it is rooted in exclusion and racism.

The Court should reject this effort outright. Birthright citizenship is a constitutional guarantee.

“It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution,” Chief Justice John Roberts told Solicitor General D. John Sauer during the hearing. That should be the answer here. The politics have changed. The Constitution has not.

Final decision is expected later this summer.