The Supreme Court has a major opportunity to help fix illegal immigration

I am a child immigrant. I believe whole-heartedly in the value and importance of legal immigration. Lawful, smart, intentional immigration is a very, very good thing. America was built on immigration, followed by assimilation.

But the scourge of illegal immigration has festered for far too long. Under the Biden administration (and other presidencies before it), millions of illegal immigrants flooded the southern border with no recourse. Border security was nonexistent, eroded by left-wing politicians—and RINOs—trading off American sovereignty for perceived political gain.

Americans have had enough of lawless governance, and they elected Donald Trump precisely to do something about it. That’s how democracy works.

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Some judge in Maryland or Maine doesn’t get to decide how the entire country lives and under which laws he happens to support. That’s not how democracy works.

A national, holistic conversation about immigration is long overdue, and the Supreme Court is right to address it. However, that’s not all that is at stake before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court’s first question is addressing the toxic judicial activism of nationwide injunctions that are overturning popular elections and policies, and the importance of limiting such lawfare to where it belongs.

Yes, the Supreme Court can take a stand on the abuse of the courts by judicial activists and well-funded litigant groups. And yes, the Supreme Court can easily overturn the recent anti-Trump injunctions without even ruling on the substance of the issue—birthright citizenship—but that would simply kick the can down the road. It would only engender further litigation and confusion and turmoil, especially if the Trump administration (rightly) continues to deport illegal aliens, including those falsely alleging entitlement to citizenship. America needs a decisive moment to re-establish its own sovereignty. The Supreme Court can deliver it, not only by ruling against left-wing judicial activism, but by tackling birthright head-on.

A truly honest ruling would strike down the slew of anti-Trump injunctions because the Trump administration is likely to prevail—as a matter of law, “birthright citizenship” was never intended for the children of illegal aliens—and the lower court erred by imposing injunctions beyond its own jurisdictional confines. That would be both the legally correct ruling, and the one essential for preserving American democracy.

So-called “anchor babies” have no legal right to U.S. citizenship. According to the Fourteenth Amendment, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The purpose of the amendment was explicitly to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scot v. Sandford, which held that African-Americans (including freemen) were categorically excluded from being U.S. citizens. This clause was intended to ensure that both former slaves and other African-Americans born in this country would be accorded full U.S. citizenship. Because the amendment predates our modern immigration system, it was never even remotely considered as a means of gifting American citizenship to those who break our laws from the moment they set foot in America.

Emphasis belongs on this phrase: “Subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. It was widely understood as referring only to people who legally owed allegiance to the U.S. under international law. Thus, it is generally accepted the children of diplomats, or those of foreign invading armies, are not entitled to citizenship when the 14th Amendment was written.

Neither were the children of Native Americans who belonged to Indian tribes, which were generally regarded as foreign nations at the time of the 14th Amendment’s adoption. Only later did Congress—not unelected judges—extend U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans. Just as children of non-citizen tribe members at the time of the 14th Amendment’s adoption generally could be denied birthright U.S. citizenship due to their parents’ legal allegiance to their tribe, so too can children of illegal aliens today be denied birthright U.S. citizenship based on their parents’ legal allegiance to their nation of citizenship, and lack of allegiance to U.S. law.

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Some contend the Supreme Court endorsed a broad conception of birthright citizenship in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which adopted the common law principle of “jus soli” (citizenship by birth on the soil). However, that case involved parents who were lawful permanent residents of the country. It did not involve people who had unlawfully entered the country and were subject to deportation or removal.

Expansive constitutional notions of birthright citizenship—beloved by today’s Left—create perverse incentives for illegal immigration. That much is obvious. Moreover, granting birthright citizenship to illegal aliens allows Democrats to reallocate political power on a national level by simply refusing to enforce federal immigration law. Allowing millions of undocumented people to enter the country skews census results around largely left-leaning urban centers at the expense of the rest of the country, not to mention illegal immigrants—if Democrats had their way—voting Democrat.

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Our law and history are crystal clear. However sympathetic the plight of anchor babies, that is a policy problem for Congress—not the courts—to solve.

Until that happens, it is the president’s duty to faithfully execute the law and deport illegal aliens, including their children. Judges cannot fashion the law to suit their feelings. The Supreme Court knows this, and should act—both to end the birthright fiction and the Left’s appalling judicial activism.