On April 1, 2026, President Trump sat in a courtroom before the United States Supreme Court and presented oral argument in Trump v. Barbara. This case is not new in U.S. politics, but it raises a pressing issue about birthright citizenship: who can claim it?
A brief introduction of these two respective parties is in order: President Donald Trump, the current sitting president, and “Barbara,” a pseudonym of a Honduran mother who has been seeking asylum in the U.S. since 2024.
In January, the Trump Administration enacted Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” The order states that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has allegedly never applied to those with heritage outside of the United States.
This would inherently apply to Barbara’s third child, whose birth made her wish for the protection and peace of mind U.S. citizenship would give her and her unborn child at the time.
The order further says that the Fourteenth Amendment was specifically created within the context of giving citizenship to those who were formerly enslaved African Americans or the descendants of formerly enslaved African Americans. The core of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to people born within the U.S. based on the Constitution’s legal nature.
“All three branches of government have long interpreted this language to signal a broad grant of citizenship. In keeping with that understanding, the Supreme Court ruled in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark that the 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship to anyone born in the United States, including the children of parents who are not U.S. citizens. There are only a few narrow exceptions — for instance, U.S.-born children of foreign ambassadors would not be considered American citizens,” said the Brennen Center for Justice on the topic.
The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause answers that question. This clause specifically applies to individuals and outlines the steps they can take to obtain citizenship. Birthright citizenship guarantees that a person born in the U.S. receives U.S. citizenship at birth, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
The Citizenship Clause protects those with parents born outside the U.S., as well as generational birthright citizens. Generational birthright citizens are anyone with a U.S.-issued birth certificate. Concerns have arisen following the announcement of this order due to recent ICE actions.
In late 2025, ICE detained many U.S. citizens, not only people who gained their citizenship through applying for it, but also those who had birthright citizenship. Today, these raids persist, though many go unreported. At the end of 2025 alone, ProPublica reported 170 detainees with U.S. citizenship, with many being defendants of immigrants.
ProPublica is left leaning, but Oversight Democrats, a group of Democratic and Republican House representatives, have corroborated the severity of these claims. In 2026, wrongful detentions of U.S. citizens, including birthright citizens, occurred. Birthright citizenship is fundamental to the U.S. citizenship system. The current administration challenges this foundation, targeting the constitutional rights of children born to immigrants in the United States.
The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to people born within the U.S. on the grounds that this amendment was enacted to recognize African Americans as not just citizens but also people. All of this was, and remains, the framework in which our country has handled the issue of birthright citizenship.
“U.S. to non-citizen parents from the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. This would include children born to long-term work and educational visa holders, DACA recipients, and people with humanitarian protections.
We need not look any further than the history of free Black people prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment to see what would happen were this executive order to stand. In antebellum America, free Black people were forced to carry papers around to prove their freedom and fight attempts to be kidnapped into slavery,” said Time in an article referring to the matter of birthright citizenship.
Completely removing this section of the clause opens the door to troubling issues, such as revoking the citizenship of “generational” birthright citizens who have not had a connection to their ancestral lands for years, decades, or even centuries in some cases.
Birthright citizenship is the right to U.S. citizenship for those born in the U.S. The Constitution states within the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause that persons within the confines of the U.S.-controlled land, be it a state or territory, are granted the right to be a U.S. citizen automatically by being born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status.
These children are protected under the Constitution. In the case of Trump v. Barbara, the verdict, constitutionally, is that those who were born here belong here. Depending on the age of the citizen, safeguards outside of the constitution need to be put in place to ensure their safety, regardless of their ethnicity. As of today, no verdict has been reached in this year-long trial by citizenship.
