{"id":282820,"date":"2026-06-30T21:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T21:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/282820\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T21:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T21:30:12","slug":"nyc-immigrants-legal-advocates-say-theyre-breathing-a-cautious-sigh-of-relief-as-u-s-supreme-court-upholds-birthright-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/282820\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC immigrants, legal advocates say they\u2019re breathing a cautious sigh of relief as U.S. Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City\u2019s immigrant communities and legal advocacy groups representing them said they are breathing a sigh of relief Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld<\/a> birthright citizenship, striking down an executive order from President Donald Trump that would have ended the practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s high court, in its 6-3 decision<\/a>, said it recognized the nation\u2019s \u201cancient\u201d rule that citizenship extends to all who are born in the United States, regardless of whether the person they\u2019re born to is here legally, because the United States\u2019 jurisdiction includes all within its borders.<\/p>\n

\u201cArguments for limiting birthright citizenship to those domiciled in the United States fail,\u201d wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the court\u2019s majority opinion. \u201cChildren born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are \u2018subject to the jurisdiction\u2019 of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s Citizenship.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCitizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights\u2014to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to \u2018every free-born person in this land,\u2019\u201d Roberts continued in an opinion signed onto in part by Justice Brett Kavanaugh and in full by Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson. \u201cWe keep that promise today.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACLU, which brought the case in defense of birthright citizenship, commended the decision, with Cecillia Wang, the organization\u2019s national legal director who argued before the high court, saying it \u201creaffirms a fundamental American promise \u2014 if you are born here, you are a citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA president cannot change the Constitution by executive fiat,\u201d Wang said. \u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

However, immigrant groups and lawyers said they are not letting their guards down yet, pointing to the continued heightened ICE enforcement across the city and the high court\u2019s ruling last week to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians and Syrians.<\/a> <\/p>\n

That decision will effectively strip roughly 40,000 New Yorkers of legal status in less than a month and open the door for the administration to cut off TPS for over a million people from other countries who are legally living and working here on that provision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can breathe a sigh of relief today,\u201d said Harold Solis, a legal director for immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t erase everything else that\u2019s happening right now. We\u2019ve seen in the last year even citizens have sometimes been subjected to the forces of immigration enforcement, so I don\u2019t think this solves everything. I don\u2019t think people should assume that everything will change for the better as of today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Advocates rally in Foley Square after Tuesday\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

At least, Solis said, people no longer have to worry about being stripped of their birthright citizenship. Today\u2019s ruling means that any potential future attempt by the administration to challenge their legal standing won\u2019t be successful.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the court could have been clearer that the guarantee of birthright citizenship is promised by the Constitution, and that means that no president, not even President Trump, can unilaterally try to rewrite the Constitution to strip people of that rank,\u201d Solis said. \u201cThat, to me, confirms that there\u2019s no way for a president to do what President Trump tried to do last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immigrant advocates vow to fight on against other Trump policies
\n\"\"Advocates speak on the importance of birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n

Dozens of advocates and lawyers gathered in Foley Square hours after Tuesday\u2019s ruling to celebrate and emphasize that they\u2019d continue pushing back against legal attacks on immigrants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s ruling means that hundreds of thousands of families can breathe a little bit easier and know that their child is here to stay,\u201d said New York Immigration Coalition President Murad Awawdeh. \u201cNot even the Trump administration can take away their constitutional right to belong here. But let\u2019s be clear on one thing: The attempt to end birthright citizenship isn\u2019t an isolated attack. It\u2019s part of the Trump administration\u2019s broader campaign to go to war against immigrants who make this country what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faiza Ali, the commissioner of the Mayor\u2019s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said the court\u2019s decision upholds one of the Constitution\u2019s clearest guarantees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerations of immigrants have come to New York in pursuit of safety, opportunity, and the chance to build a better future for themselves and their families,\u201d Ali said. \u201cIn doing so, they have fortified our city and created a blueprint for our nation \u2013 one that recognizes that diversity is our profound strength.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Advocates celebrate the 14th Amendment after Tuesday\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

Mamdani echoed his commissioner\u2019s sentiment, calling the ruling a rejection of the federal government\u2019s attempt to rewrite the Constitution in an effort to arbitrarily decide who belongs in the country and who doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s Supreme Court ruling affirms a promise that was written into our Constitution more than 150 years ago: if you are born on American soil, you are an American citizen, no matter the color of your skin, where your parents were born, how you worship, or the language you speak at home,\u201d Mamdani said.\u00a0 This should never have been in doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York City is living proof of the power of birthright citizenship,\u201d the mayor added. The children of immigrants are our teachers, nurses, construction workers, small business owners, artists, public servants and neighbors. So, to every immigrant family across the five boroughs: hear me clearly. You belong here. Your children belong here.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a message particularly important to Abby, a DACA recipient and single mother of three children who are U.S. citizens by birth.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, I was pregnant when the Trump administration signed an executive order attempting to take away birthright citizenship,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery day since that executive order was signed until the day I gave birth, I wondered if my newborn would be considered a US citizen and what would happen to him? What would his birth certificate say? What country would he belong to?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was anxious, worried, sad,\u201d said Abby, who didn\u2019t share her last name. \u201cEnding birthright citizenship would create chaos and uncertainty for all families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Attorneys, advocates and government officials speak in Foley Square.<\/p>\n

Attorney General Letitia James, who joined a coalition of attorneys general across the country to file<\/a> a suit parallel to the ACLU\u2019s also challenging Trump\u2019s executive order attempting to strike down birthright citizenship that secured a court decision preventing<\/a> Trump\u2019s order from going into effect as the legal process played out, said she had children like Abby\u2019s in mind when considering how grateful she was for the high court\u2019s decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI am relieved for the children who will never know how close the American dream came to being taken from them, and for the families who will never have to explain to a child why the country they were born in refuses to accept them,\u201d James said in a statement. \u201cEvery person born in the United States is an American. That was true yesterday, it is true today, and we will never stop fighting to make sure it remains true tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked for comment on the ruling, Trump\u2019s Department of Justice pointed amNewYork to a social media post<\/a> it had made earlier in the day referencing its arguments to the high court that birthright citizenship allows for \u201cbirth tourism,\u201d and that the 14th Amendment should be reinterpreted to fit today\u2019s reality, which they allege involves a widespread practice of people are travelling to the United States just to have a child so they can obtain legal status themselves down the line.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBirth tourism schemes exploit our immigration laws and often violate our criminal law,\u201d the post reads. \u201cThe Department of Justice will prioritize the prosecutions of birth tourism schemes across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s immigrant communities and legal advocacy groups representing them said they are breathing a sigh of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[75460,2301,2710,9,56,63,65,64,64108],"class_list":["post-282820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-birthright-citizenship","tag-immigration","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-united-states-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}