5-month-old baby faces Trump in trial over birthright citizenship that could change the US

The most delicate thing about the case is not only in what the Administration proposes, but in the sources on which it is based. In their writings before the Supreme Court, government lawyers turn to 19th century jurists such as Alexander Porter Morse, Francis Wharton o George D. Collins to argue that birthright citizenship was never as broad as it has been interpreted for more than a century.

The core of these theories was clear: the place of birth should not be sufficient to grant citizenship. These authors argued that the determining factor was the political relationship of parents with the country.

Francis Wharton formulated that idea systematically. He maintained that a child could only be a citizen if his parents had a real and permanent “domicile” in the United Statesthat is, if they were a stable part of the public community. This concept made it possible to exclude those who were considered foreigners passing through, even if they had been living there for years.

The key was how it was defined who really belonged to that community. And that’s where the argument stopped being technical. Wharton argued that certain groups—particularly chinese immigrants—they couldn’t reach that level of belonging. Not because the law prevented it, but because, according to their criteria, they did not share the necessary values to integrate into the nation.

George D. Collins took that approach even further in the late 19th century legal attempts to deny citizenship to the children of Asian immigrants. In his writings, he described them as people incapable of becoming citizens in the full sensewhich justified, in his opinion, that his children were not either, even if they were born in the United States.

Alexander Porter Morse, for his part, provided a legal basis for this approach from an even more explicit position. Former Confederate officer and defender of segregationwas part of a movement that tried to limit the scope of the amendments approved after the Civil War.

These theories were not marginal, but neither did they become dominant doctrine. They were part of an attempt to restrict the effects of the 14th Amendment at a time of strong racial and political backlash. He Supreme Court closed that road in 1898by establishing that a man born in the United States to Chinese parents was a citizenthus consolidating a broad interpretation of citizenship by birth.

What is relevant now is that this logic reappears, although with another language. The Administration does not talk about race or civilization, but it recovers the same argumentative structure: that being born in the country is not enough, that a form of prior belonging is necessary that not all parents can transmit.

Figures, legal limits and political calculation

The case now being examined by the Supreme Court is not a theoretical discussion. If the interpretation defended by the Trump Administration were to prosper, the change would be immediate and measurable: around 250,000 children a year would no longer automatically acquire US citizenshipaccording to estimates included in writings presented before the court itself.

The projection is even more significant. In the medium term, it would imply the appearance of millions of people born in the United States without citizenshipan unprecedented situation in the recent history of the country. The problem is not only the magnitude, but the lack of legal reserve.

The US system does not provide for a broad category of native-born people without citizenship. Many of these children would depend on the legislation of the countries of origin of their parents to obtain a nationality, which in some cases is not automatic or requires complex procedures outside of United States territory.

In others, it would mean returning to countries from which families fled. The risk of statelessness—practically nonexistent today in the United States—would become a real scenario. From a legal point of view, the difficulty for the Administration’s thesis to prosper is considerable.

The precedent that supports birthright citizenship has not been seriously questioned for more than a century and is part of the basic architecture of the constitutional system. Altering it would require the Supreme Court not only to reinterpret a norm, but also to review a jurisprudential line consolidated for generations.

Therefore, beyond the conservative majority of the court, the leap that is proposed is especially abrupt. It is not common for the Supreme Court to reopen debates that seemed closed for more than a century.

The decision will come in the coming months. What is at stake is simpler—and deeper—: whether being born in The United States will continue to open the door to the so-called American dream, or if that promise begins to be inherited—and denied—before we are even born.