By imposing new hurdles to deny citizenship to newborns whose parents lack specific legal statuses, this executive order perverts the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment—designed to guarantee equal dignity to those born in the United States—into a tool for social exclusion. The children targeted by this edict are rendered stateless through no fault of their own, punished because of decisions their parents made or circumstances beyond anyone’s control. This not only undermines the moral principle that birth on American soil confers a basic civic bond; it also defies logical consistency by burdening bureaucracies and sowing community instability, all while contravening a century and a half of established jurisprudence and national identity.
