Mass. and nearly two-dozen states sue Trump for move to end birthright citizenship

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and 17 other state AGs filed a lawsuit to challenge President Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in the United States.

Trump's order, signed on his first day in office Monday, argues the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all people born in the U.S., does not extend to those born to parents who are in the country without legal status.

Campbell and a number of Democratic attorneys general from New Jersey to California disagree. The District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco also joined the suit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts. Four more states filed a separate suit in federal court on Monday, bringing the total number of states suing over the policy to 22.

“Birthright citizenship in our country is a guarantee of equality, born out of a collective fight against oppression, slavery and its devastating harms. It is a settled right in our Constitution and recognized by the Supreme Court for more than a century,” Campbell said in a statement. “President Trump does not have the authority to take away constitutional rights, and we will fight against his effort to overturn our Constitution and punish innocent babies born in Massachusetts.”

Boston College law professor Daniel Kanstroom said he doubts Trump's order will survive the legal challenges, but it's likely to cause "a lot of chaos and harm to people and to make tremendous fear and uncertainty."

"The best thing you can say about the executive order is that it's a sort of crude attempt to provoke a constitutional challenge. And it might do that," Kanstroom said. But, he added, the order "actually also violates the statute and the way that the statute has been interpreted for many decades. So, my guess is that the courts will make quick work of this."

Campbell, at a press conference Tuesday, said the AGs chose to file the suit in Massachusetts " given our protections here, particularly for immigrants, our values here in Massachusetts, and a judiciary that is quite intelligent, and of course puts the rule of law at the forefront of everything they do."

The Boston-based organization Lawyers for Civil Rights also filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court in Massachusetts, alleging that the executive order is unconstitutional. It names Trump, the Department of State, Marco Rubio, the Social Security Administration and its acting commissioner, Michelle King, as defendants.

Trump's order directs the Social Security Administration not to issue social security numbers, passports or federal documentation to children born to parents who are not "lawful permanent residents" of the U.S.

"Birthright citizenship is a right defined and guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment," the lawyers argue in the lawsuit. "The President lacks the power to revoke it."

The civil suit was filed on behalf of an expectant mother, who is due to give birth in March, and the immigration advocacy groups La Colaborativa and the Brazilian Worker Center. The expectant mother, identified in the suit as O. Doe, is in the country under Temporary Protected Status, while the father of the unborn child is not a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident.

"There's no way that they're going to come to our city of Chelsea and we're going to stand with our arms crossed, waiting for our people to be taken away."

La Colaborativa Executive Director Gladys Vega

La Colaborativa's executive director, Gladys Vega, told reporters the group is preparing to protect clients from mass deportations and is holding sessions on immigrant rights.

"One thing that I know for sure is that we will fight the Trump administration to the day I die," Vega said. "Because there's no way that they're going to come to our city of Chelsea and we're going to stand with our arms crossed, waiting for our people to be taken away."

Chelsea City Manager Fidel Maltez said it's scary for the city to be facing this kind of threat to immigrants, "But Chelsea has been here before." He said the city is prepared to fight to protect its residents.

"I'm a father. I am also an immigrant. I came to this country and I have children who are now citizens," Maltez said. "I cannot imagine how our parents are feeling in Chelsea, in our streets, in our schools."

In a statement, Lawyers for Civil Rights called Trump's order "overtly racist" and said it "threatens to harm millions of children and families across the country."

“This Executive Order is a brutal and unconstitutional attempt to redefine what it means to be an American,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director for Lawyers for Civil Rights. “The Constitution is clear: birthplace, not parentage, determines citizenship in this country."

A similar suit was filed Monday in New Hampshire by the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, along with the ACLU of Massachusetts and of Maine, on behalf of immigrant advocacy organizations.

With reporting from WBUR's Deborah Becker.