The Supreme Court's decision to uphold birthright citizenship delivered what immigration advocates hailed as a decisive victory for constitutional rights and family protections. Yet even as legal champagne was popping, the real battle lines were forming elsewhere, and the win may prove hollow if the administration succeeds in its quieter assault on citizenship itself.
Chief Justice John Roberts framed the 5-justice majority decision in sweeping terms: citizenship is the foundational right that grants all others. The Constitution's promise of birthright citizenship, won through bloodshed and Reconstruction, remained intact.
But experts quickly identified the trap. Citizenship as a legal status and citizenship as a functioning right are not the same thing. Robert Chang, executive director of UC Irvine Law School's Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, explained that even with birthright citizenship secure on paper, the federal government possesses numerous levers to hollow it out in practice. Raising the evidentiary bar to prove citizenship, tightening documentation standards, or restricting the rights attached to that status can all be done without explicitly attacking the Fourteenth Amendment.
That distinction matters because the Trump administration appears to be shifting tactics. Gone, for now, are the spectacular immigration raids and public crackdowns that defined the first administration's approach. In their place is what Todd Schulte of the immigration advocacy group FWD.us calls "an all-of-government approach" pursued quietly, away from cameras.
The Department of Justice has confirmed plans to file at least 250 denaturalization cases by October, targeting individuals already granted citizenship and seeking to strip it away. This systematic effort to undo naturalization proceedings represents a novel front in the citizenship wars, one that operates through bureaucratic process rather than headline-grabbing raids.
Meanwhile, the administration is slow-walking renewal applications for beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Obama-era shield for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. Immigration hardliners view this as a de facto dismantling of DACA, accomplished through administrative delay rather than legislative abolition or court challenge.
The timing of the birthright citizenship victory only underscores the precarity. Just days earlier, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to reject asylum seekers who have not yet crossed the southern border and to terminate humanitarian protections for Syrian and Haitian nationals. A separate 6-3 decision also ruled that the Temporary Protected Status program is largely shielded from judicial review, meaning hundreds of thousands of people currently working and living in the United States could lose protection without meaningful court recourse.
Efrén Olivares of the National Immigration Law Center warned that the fight is far from over. The courts remain divided on major questions surrounding expedited deportations, mandatory detention, and the scope of executive power over immigration policy. The legal landscape continues to shift, with battles still pending that could reshape who remains in the country and under what conditions.
Chang noted the staggering practical challenge underlying all of this: actually executing mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of people would require resources and coordination that federal agencies may lack. But the administration does not necessarily need to deport everyone. It can make life increasingly precarious, work authorizations fragile, and legal status uncertain for those already here.
Author James Rodriguez: "A Supreme Court win that leaves the tools of citizenship intact but allows the government to restrict its substance is not a victory that will age well."
Comments