New Jersey leads effort to challenge President Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship
Eighteen states, including New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, plus the District of Columbia and San Francisco sued in federal court to block President Donald Trump's order.
Top Stories
New Jersey’s state attorney general is fighting back against President Donald Trump's executive order, which could block birthright citizenship.
Attorney General Matthew Platkin is leading 22 states in filing a lawsuit to block that order from taking effect.
Platkin announced the filing from his Newark office saying, “We are prepared, and we are going to vigorously defend birthright citizenship and our American and New Jersey values.”
Platkin says President Trump can’t write the 14th Amendment out of existence and calls the executive order an attack on the fabric of the nation.
RELATED: President Trump signs slew of executive orders on Day 1. What are his priorities?
"When we talk about immigrant communities when we talk about who these people are we need to remember that they are all of us. They’re not some people far away," he says.
The president signed the order to make it more difficult to be a citizen. It would end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, including the children of parents in the U.S. on a visa.
The move could leave scores of newborns at hospitals in limbo.
Data from the state Attorney General's Office says that 6,200 children a year in New Jersey are protected by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. That amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil.
Under this executive order, those children would have no status or no home.
Also joining in with these states is the ACLU.
“Denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional - it's also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values," said executive director Anthony Romero.
The order is set to start in 30 days.
However, Platkin is confident the injunction will go through since the Supreme Court has upheld this law twice.
“I’m confident this order is never going to take effect because it is so clearly unlawful and unconstitutional," he says.
