Trump's birthright proposal would not affect his children's US citizenship
- Published on December 11, 2024 at 22:55
- 6 min read
- By Daniel GALGANO, AFP USA
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"Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship would mean 4 of his children wouldn't be considered US citizens," says a December 8, 2024 X post with tens of thousands of interactions.
Another December 9 Facebook post asks: "So when Trump bans birthright citizenship will he go by mother?"
The same claim about Trump's children has circulated elsewhere on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, TikTok and Gettr.
In a November 8 interview with NBC's "Meet the Press," Trump said he would attempt to end birthright citizenship upon taking office in January. The status guarantees every child born on US soil where the Constitution applies is automatically granted citizenship, regardless of their parents' status.
Trump did not propose stripping citizenship from people who already have it, but he did indicate his administration might deport relatives of non-citizens to avoid separating families.
"I don't want to be breaking up families," he told "Meet the Press." "So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back."
However, the president-elect's proposal would not affect his children's citizenship status.
Trump children born in US
The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, ratified in 1868 after the American Civil War, guarantees citizenship to everyone born in the country (archived here).
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," the amendment says.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot revoke someone's citizenship under the 14th Amendment unless they commit fraud during the naturalization process or willingly surrender it (archived here).
Trump has been married three times and has five children, all of whom were born in the United States and thus are automatically entitled to US citizenship.
Trump was born in Queens, New York in 1946 (archived here). He had three children with his first wife, Ivana Trump: Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump -- all of whom were born in New York.
Ivana Trump was born a citizen of Czechoslovakia. While she reportedly also held Austrian and Canadian citizenship at points in her life, all three of her children were born before she became a naturalized American citizen in 1988 (archived here).
Donald Trump had his fourth child, Tiffany Trump, in the state of Florida with his second wife, Marla Maples from the state of Georgia (archived here).
The president-elect's youngest child, Barron Trump, was born in a New York City hospital in March 2006 with his third wife, Melania Trump. The future first lady was born in Yugoslavia in what is now Slovenia and became a US citizen in July 2006, months after she gave birth to her son (archived here and here).
'Nonsensical'
Trump outlined his plans to change citizenship rules in his "Agenda 47" platform released in 2023. He claimed federal authorities were "misapplying" the 14th Amendment and said he would sign an executive order mandating citizenship only be given to children born in the United States if at least one of their parents is a citizen or permanent resident (archived here)
Lauren DesRosiers, director of the immigration law clinic at Albany Law School (archived here), said Trump would likely need to amend the Constitution and repeal or alter the 14th Amendment to do away with automatic birthright citizenship. This would be a lengthy process requiring ratification either by a constitutional convention or approval by two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of state legislatures.
"Executive action would certainly not be something that would be able to make that change," DesRosiers said December 10, 2024.
Even if Trump managed to revise or scrap the 14th Amendment, none of his children would be affected. DesRosiers said posts claiming otherwise are "nonsensical" and do not consider the Immigration and Nationality Act, which outlines how people not born in the United States can obtain citizenship (archived here).
"If your parent meets the residency requirements and all the other requirements, you can acquire citizenship through a single parent," she said.
Jacqueline Stevens, director of the Deportation Research Clinic at Northwestern University (archived here), confirmed that because Trump has always been a US citizen, his children are entitled to citizenship under the Agenda 47 proposals regardless of their mothers' status.
"Those provisions are by statute and not in the Constitution, so he couldn't change those on his own, either -- that would require the Congress to change the laws," she said December 11.
Hiroshi Motomura, a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law (archived here), said children born to one US citizen can inherit a second citizenship from their other parent. A 2020 book about Melania Trump titled "The Art of Her Deal" says Barron Trump inherited dual Slovenian citizenship from his mother (archived here).
AFP has debunked other claims about Donald Trump here.
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