Washington, DC [US]: The Trump administration has filed emergency appeals in the US Supreme Court, seeking permission to proceed with its controversial plan to end birthright citizenship, CNN reported.
In its appeal, the administration argued that lower courts had overstepped their authority by issuing nationwide injunctions that blocked the policy. The administration is asking the Supreme Court to limit the impact of these rulings.
Earlier in January, a federal judge ruled Trump’s executive order as “blatantly unconstitutional” and blocked its enforcement. Shortly after, a Maryland judge similarly stated that the plan “runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.”
Despite multiple appeals courts rejecting the Trump administration’s attempts to lift these injunctions, the administration is now seeking a Supreme Court ruling to implement its order in cases not covered by the ongoing litigation.
The Justice Department stated in its emergency appeal that “universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration.”
The appeal argued that these injunctions have wrongly blocked Trump’s Day 1 executive order, preventing it from being enforced “anywhere in the country, as to ‘hundreds of thousands’ of unspecified individuals who are ‘not before the court nor identified by the court’.”
The Trump administration also requested permission to provide guidance on how it would enforce the policy if permitted.
In its filing, the administration claimed that previous interpretations of the citizenship clause were incorrect, arguing that birthright citizenship had been wrongly extended to include children of undocumented immigrants and those with temporary visas.
“That policy of near-universal birthright citizenship created strong incentives for illegal immigration,” the Justice Department asserted.
The Supreme Court is expected to announce a briefing schedule, which will require a swift response from those challenging the policy.
In one of his first actions as the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to end automatic birthright citizenship. The order targets children born in the US to parents who are either undocumented immigrants or on temporary visas.
The order applies to children born on or after February 19 and does not apply retroactively.