President Trump on Friday said his administration would move ahead with plans to end birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court limited the ability of judges to pause the president’s executive orders.
But even as he celebrated the ruling in a news conference, Mr. Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi struggled to provide basic details about how they would carry out a policy that would reshape American citizenship.
The court did not address the merits of Mr. Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, which is expected to come back to the court, perhaps as soon as this fall. But the practical effect of Friday’s 6-3 decision is that, in 30 days, birthright citizenship would end in the 28 states that have not challenged Mr. Trump’s order.
Ms. Bondi dodged questions over who would be responsible for vetting citizenship under Mr. Trump’s policy and whether medical professionals would be tasked with verifying the citizenship of new parents. “This is all pending litigation,” Ms. Bondi said, predicting it will be decided in the court’s next term.
Asked if babies of undocumented parents would be a deportation priority, Ms. Bondi said “the violent criminals in our country are the priority” before pivoting to the Justice Department’s efforts to arrest gang members.
Rather than provide details on how the policy would work, Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi used the decision to take a victory lap and promote their immigration agenda.
“We’re very confident in the Supreme Court,” Ms. Bondi said when asked if the administration was concerned the court could find Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship order unconstitutional. “We’re thrilled with their decision today.”
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, made the unsubstantiated claim that the “worst people, some of the cartels” used birthright citizenship “to get people into our country.”
“This had to do with the babies of slaves very obviously,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he thought the Supreme Court would rule that his policy was constitutional. “I came along and we looked and said, ‘this is wrong. We’ve been looking at birthright citizenship wrong for years.’”
In fact, while birthright citizenship was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution in 1868, the Supreme Court in 1898 considered citizenship in the case of the child of Chinese immigrant laborers. Since then, the courts have maintained an expansive view of citizenship.
Mr. Trump’s ideas have long been considered legally fringe, largely pushed by scholars connected to the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank.
Mr. Trump also on Friday celebrated the direct impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling: the limits on the ability of federal judges to block his policies.
“Somebody from a certain location in a very liberal state or liberal judge or a liberal group of judges could tie up a whole country for years because their decision would sometime take years to overturn,” Mr. Trump said.
Both Democrats and Republicans have had parts of their agendas derailed by nationwide injunctions going back decades.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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