Children and Babies Have the Most to Lose

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments tomorrow related to President Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship. Although the case centers not on the meat of the issue, but on the limits of judicial power, the harm that ending birthright citizenship will inflict on the nation’s children will loom large.

“The birthright citizenship debate is not just about immigration,” said Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus on Children. “It is a question of who we are as a country and how we value our babies and children. Stripping away birthright citizenship would create a new class of undocumented and stateless children, condemning millions of U.S. kids, who have done nothing wrong, to a life in the shadows without the protections and opportunities afforded to their peers. These children would endure life-long discrimination, denial of basic benefits and services, and an unrecoverable blow to their health, development and well-being, as both children and adults. Ending birthright citizenship is not good for kids, and it’s not good for America.”

Eliminating birthright citizenship would:

  • Require every one of the 3.6 million babies born annually in the U.S. to apply for citizenship.
  • Deny newborns and infants essential services like health care, nutrition, and child care — at the very moment they need it most.
  • Create a massive bureaucracy to decide which babies “belong” here and which do not.
  • Leave hundreds of thousands of children stateless, making them vulnerable to exclusion and exploitation, and stripping them of the opportunity to thrive.

When the question comes before them, the U.S. Supreme Court should affirm the clear language in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution; affirm the 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark; recognize birthright citizenship as part of federal law (8 U.S. Code Seciton 1401) that cannot simply be overturned by a presidential executive order; and recognize the fundamental constitutional rights and protections that babies enjoy.

First Focus Campaign for Children outlined these and other issues in a letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Brian Babin opposing their Birthright Citizenship Act of 2025 (S. 304/H.R.569), which seeks to radically change the Constitution’s citizenship clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, reverse several Supreme Court decisions, overturn long-standing federal statutes, and gut centuries-old procedures and practices for determining citizenship in our country.

For more on the impact that ending birthright citizenship will have on children, read “Born in the USA: The Constitution is Clear — Babies are Citizens” and “In Harm’s Way: The Consequences of Denying Birthright Citizenship for America’s Children and our Future.”