America’s Roman Catholic bishops have asked the nation’s highest court to stop President Donald Trump’s “immoral” bid to end birthright citizenship.
In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court on Thursday, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC), asked the justices to “protect God-given human dignity” by finding the president’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional.
“At its core, this case is not solely a question about citizenship status or the Fourteenth Amendment,” the bishops wrote. “It is a question of whether the law will affirm or deny the equal worth of those born within our common community—whether the law will protect the human dignity of all God’s children.”
Trump signed the executive order “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” on his first day back in office. It sought to deny citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented parents, despite birthright citizenship being enshrined in the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court is expected to consider the order in the coming months.
The bishops described the president’s order as “antithetical to the import of the Church’s teachings” because “it deprives people whose parents were not born here, or whose mother has temporary status, of the legal rights necessary to participate in the society of their birth.”
They argued that “ending birthright citizenship denies the innate dignity and freedom of the person” and that the Bible “calls us to give special care to vulnerable people, including migrants and children, both of whom are affected by this Executive Order.”
“Children do nothing wrong by being born in the United States. Yet, this Executive Order renders them stateless,” the USCCB said. “Depriving an innocent child of his citizenship based upon his parents’ immigration status would be an especially outrageous punishment—one that this Court has rejected as punishment even for people who have been proven guilty.”
The bishops also said they were saddened by what they described as a “climate of fear and anxiety” and the “vilification of immigrants” that is “all too common in the rhetoric concerning immigration policy.”
“Ending birthright citizenship lacks historical, legal, and moral support,” the bishops concluded, urging the Court to reject the executive order and “uphold the enduring constitutional and moral commitment to equal dignity for all persons born in the United States.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Trump’s order was almost immediately challenged in the courts. Within a month, three federal district judges issued nationwide injunctions blocking it from taking effect.
A decision by the Supreme Court could have far-reaching consequences for Trump’s immigration policies, which officials have framed as a cornerstone of his second term.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also went after Trump last year for his executive order allowing immigration raids at schools and churches, drawing the ire of Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 and calls himself a “baby Catholic.”
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