Audrey Setiawan worries about the next little girl like her who has waited all her life to vote in the United States.
The 17-year-old from Lincoln Park said she was “definitely shocked” when President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week aimed at ending birthright citizenship.
The right guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. regardless of their parents’ immigration status. It is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
“As a first generation American, I’m kind of terrified for the future of millions of others like me,” said Setiawan, whose parents immigrated from Indonesia in the 1990s. “America is my home. I could never imagine being born here, living here all my life and not being able to enjoy the right to citizenship.”
If Trump’s order stands, it would block citizenship for children born after Feb. 18 who don’t have at least one U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident parent.
Several state attorneys general, including Illinois’ Kwame Raoul, have filed lawsuits against the order claiming it violates the 14th Amendment and the Immigration and Nationality Act, which specifies that the law does not empower the president to determine who should or should not be granted U.S. citizenship at birth. It also claims the executive order violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
A federal judge agreed Thursday to temporarily block the order. Judge John Coughenour, a Federal District Court judge who sits in Seattle, called it “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Among other changes to immigration policies, Trump campaigned on ending birthright citizenship, arguing that it incentivizes people to enter the U.S. illegally.
Yesenia Lopez, 35, said her parents immigrated from Mexico to Chicago in the 1980s simply for “better opportunities.” Her parents lack a high school education because they were constantly pulled from school growing up to work the fields in Mexico, she said.
Once they moved to Chicago, Lopez’s dad worked two jobs and her mom worked at a factory to support themselves and their three children who are all now college graduates. Lopez was recently elected to the Chicago School Board.
“I strongly believe that many, many immigrants like my parents came to this country seeking better opportunities not necessarily for them but for their future children,” Lopez, of Gage Park, said.
The executive order feels surreal for Carson Wang. He remembers learning about the 14th Amendment in his high school civics class and feeling specially connected to it because the right was upheld by the 1898 Supreme Court case of Wong Kim Ark, a man born in San Francisco to parents who were both Chinese citizens but resided in the U.S.
“President Trump’s executive order is, simply put, an act of cruelty that will tear families apart,” said Wang, whose parents moved from China to the U.S. in the 1990s on a work visa.
“It is an attack on immigrant families,” said Wang, 25, of Uptown. “It affects people like myself, and I think of the fact that there is no other country that I know other than the United States. This is my home, it’s been my home forever.”
With more than a century of Supreme Court precedence, the three birthright citizens feel hopeful that Trump’s executive order will be rejected but a sense of uneasiness remains based on the order itself.
Lopez said she’s concerned that it will stir fear and distrust of government within the immigrant community that could ultimately lead to people not seeking essential services or not participating in society.
“How do we change the narrative that, unfortunately, has been painted as negatively portraying immigrants just because of political reasons?” Lopez said. “I think it’s important to understand and know that historically, this is not the first time this has happened. We’ve seen it happen before and we’ve just gotta march strong from this.”