Asylum seeker Barbara, 35, from Cuba talks to other pregnant immigrants at her prenatal appointments in Louisville, Kentucky. One thing that comes up a lot is whether or not their babies will be born U.S. citizens.
As a safety measure, Barbara asked to only be known by her first name. In 2022, she crossed the border between the United States and Mexico with her family and asked for refuge. She is a lawyer in Cuba and said she left her home country because she was being persecuted for her religion and politics. She, her husband, and their 4-year-old daughter all have asylum claims waiting in the U.S. and do not have permanent immigration status. The child will be born in July.
As part of his broad crackdown on immigration, President Donald Trump released an executive order in January that would limit automatic U.S. citizenship for people born in the U.S. This order would deny citizenship to their unborn child if it becomes law.
Three federal judges blocked the policy across the country because they thought it probably violated the 14th Amendment’s language about citizenship. The challenges came from Democratic attorneys general from 22 states, as well as from individual pregnant immigrants and advocacy groups.
The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to narrow the scope of the injunctions so that the directive can be enforced more broadly. The reasons for this will be heard on Thursday.
The order was signed by Trump on his first day back in the White House. It tells government agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
She said that Barbara didn’t get much sleep that night.
“Hearing that news provoked a horrible stress in me, that still follows me to this day,” she shared.
The state attorneys general said in February that Trump’s order would keep from becoming a citizen more than 150,000 children born each year in the United States. In 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that about 3.6 million kids were born in the country.
At the Supreme Court, the administration has only aimed at the nationwide reach of the injunctions. They are happy to leave them in place to protect the people who sued and the people who live in the 22 states, assuming that the justices decide that these states have the legal right to bring their cases.
In that case, Trump’s order would go into effect in the 28 states that didn’t sue, which includes Kentucky, but only for people who live in those states who sued. And the Supreme Court could do something without checking to see if Trump’s order is legal.
It has been known for a long time that the 14th Amendment, which was passed in 1868, makes almost everyone born in the United States a citizen. The Trump administration has said that automatic birthright citizenship doesn’t follow the best reading of the 14th Amendment and that it promotes “birth tourism,” which is when pregnant women come to the US to give birth and make sure their children become citizens.
Helpers say the stakes are especially high for people like Barbara who are seeking refuge or who come from countries that don’t have embassies in the United States.
Barbara is afraid that her daughter will be homeless if she is born without any U.S. citizenship in her name. She said, “We came here to escape the regime, so we can’t try to become Cuban citizens.”
Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough, executive director of United Stateless, a group that fights for people who don’t have a citizenship, said that stopping birthright citizenship would make “a subset of people with no legal identity.”
Ambartsoumian-Clough said that citizenship rules are different in each country and that policies change all the time. Borders also move and countries break up. Ambartsoumian-Clough also said that not all countries let a parent make a child a citizen.
Ambartsoumian-Clough said that the more pressing realities are also scary. To give an example, how would babies’ births be officially recorded? Would they be able to get medical care and shots?
Barbara was a cleaner at a nearby school until she was told she had to stay in bed because she was pregnant with a baby that was very likely to not survive. She said she will be watching what happens at the Supreme Court because she is afraid her baby will be “born into a limbo.”
She wants to give her girl the name Valery, which means brave.
“This baby from the womb is being very brave, and has a future to conquer in this country even though they are already making it quite difficult,” she said.
She said that at her doctor’s appointments, she has seen other women, mostly from Guatemala and Mexico, cry as they talked about the chance that their babies would not get citizenship.
When Barbara talks about it, her heart rate goes up and her hands start to sweat. Another mother told Barbara that she felt the same way.
“When I talk to the other moms,” she added, “I know I’m not the only one.”