Federal judge blocks Trump’s latest attempt to restrict birthright citizenship

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s latest attempt to restrict birthright citizenship – the longstanding principle that all babies born in the US are guaranteed American citizenship.

The decision came nearly a month after the president tried for a second time to limit via executive order which people born in the US can become American citizens. The supreme court ruled in late June that Trump’s previous sweeping order denying birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors was unconstitutional.

Trump’s latest order, issued on 6 August, denied automatic citizenship not only to the children of ambassadors or “foreign ministers” but to the children of other foreign citizens. Including employees at a foreign embassy and employees of international organizations including the United Nations and the World Bank. The new order also denied birthright citizenship to children of parents the government deemed “alien enemies” parents who “engage[d] in a commercial transaction to ensure that the person’s mother is present in the United States, or a territory of the United States, to give birth”.

The federal government has yet to issue guidelines on how these restrictions would work in practice. For instance, how the government would discern between a parent that buys plane tickets to visit on vacation and one who is engaging in what the administration called “birth tourism” – visiting the country for the sole purpose of giving birth in the US.

Judge Deborah Boardman ruled on Wednesday that the supreme court had already settled some of the questions raised by Trump’s new order, writing: “No presidential executive order can undo what the Supreme Court has done.”

In a 35-page opinion, she also wrote that the new executive order could have the effect of rescinding citizenship from children who were already protected by the supreme court decision, if – for instance – the administration arbitrarily moved to designate parents as “alien enemies”. The government has already used the sweeping label of “alien enemy” to designate dozens of Venezuelan nationals with no criminal records as terrorists, justifying their deportation to a Salvadorian mega-prison last year.

“The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth’,” she wrote. The court’s decision, she said, “is the law of the land. The President must follow it.”

The plaintiffs in this latest challenge include Casa and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (Asap), two non-profits that provide immigrant services, as well as individuals who could be affected by the new executive order. The new orders are worryingly vague, said Conchita Cruz, co-founder of Asap – which was also part of the lawsuit challenging the president’s original birthright restrictions last year. “Immigrant families should not have to rush back into court on an issue that has already been resolved by the Supreme Court,” she said.

The pregnant women who partook in that first suit, who gave birth as the supreme court was deciding the fates of their newborns, have once again been plunged into uncertainty, she said.

One of the original plaintiffs, a Venezuelan asylum seeker, had told the Guardian she felt relief after the country’s highest court ruled that her baby boy was unambiguously a US citizen.

“But I know this isn’t over,” she said in a statement after the ruling on Thursday. “The threat to birthright citizenship is still out there. I’ll keep fighting for permanent protection for my child, and for every child born in this country.”