Since assuming office at the beginning of 2025, Donald Trump’s administration has targeted numerous people in the U.S. Those who have suffered the most and are the most vulnerable to the administration’s policies are the ones Trump and his compatriots believe are unworthy of living their lives on U.S. soil in peace, especially so-called “illegal immigrants.” The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has illegally chased and deported people and even brutally harmed and killed some who tried to resist them.
However, the Trump administration is also attempting to justify its agenda via legal means. In early 2025, the U.S. President issued an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship as it had been accepted since the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted three years after the end of the Civil War in 1868. While it had long been uncontested that all children born on U.S. soil would gain the country’s citizenship, according to this order, this would no longer hold for children of illegal immigrants. Thus, large groups of people would be stripped of their rights. Currently, a case is pending at the U.S. Supreme Court that is supposed to define whether this executive order violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In this conversation, Prof. Martha Jones explains the historical roots of birthright citizenship and the current U.S. administration’s attempt to undermine it.
Martha Jones is a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of various books, including Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America, which was published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press.
The interview was conducted by Konstantin Kipp. Alina Young edited the audio file.
