Does President-elect Donald Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship mean four of his children wouldn't be considered United States citizens? No, that's not true: Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and Barron Trump's father is a U.S. citizen. Thus, all four children would have qualified under Trump's 2024 stated plan that "at least one parent will have to be a citizen or a legal resident" for a newborn to have citizenship. Future proposals notwithstanding, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that anyone born in the United States is a citizen from birth.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Threads on December 8, 2024. It opened:
Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship would mean 4 of his children wouldn't be considered US citizens:
Don Jr - born in 1977
Ivanka - born in 1981
Eric - born in 1984
Ivana - became a US citizen in 1988
Barron - born in March 2006
Melania - became a US citizen in July 2006
notmypresident
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Dec 9 18:15:11 2024 UTC)
According to Donald Trump's agenda, as he explains it on the donaldjtrump.com website (archived here), he plans to sign an executive order on the first day of his second term that says, "Going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship." At 3:10 (archived here), in a video on the website, he says this about future American citizens:
At least one parent will have to be a citizen or a legal resident in order to qualify [for citizenship].
In the video, Trump says his executive order will also stop birth tourism (archived here), the practice of traveling to a country to give the unborn child automatic citizenship in that country at birth.
If the president-elect's proposals had been in effect at the time of Don Jr, Ivanka, Eric and Barron's births, the children would still have been U.S. citizens by virtue of their father, Donald Trump, who was born in Queens, New York (archived here).
Donald Trump's three children with Ivana Trump were born in New York. Donald Trump Jr. (archived here), the eldest child of Ivana and Donald Trump, was born on December 31, 1977. Ivanka Trump (archived here), Donald Trump's only daughter with Ivana Trump, was born on October 30, 1981. Eric Trump (arhived here), Donald Trump's youngest son with Ivana Trump, was born in New York on January 6, 1984.
Barron Trump, Donald Trump's youngest child and the only one with Melania Trump, was born on March 20, 2006, in New York (archived here).
Donald Trump married (archived here) Ivana in April 1977. She became a permanent U.S. citizen less than two years after their marriage, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (archived here) documents that stated on page 32 that she became a "lawful permanent resident" on October 23, 1978, as this screenshot shows:
(Source: USCIS website screenshot taken on Mon Dec 9 18:49:22 2024 UTC)
Ivana Trump became a U.S. citizen on May 25, 1998, as page 2 of the documents shows in this screenshot:
(Source: USCIS website screenshot taken on Mon Dec 9 18:54:34 2024 UTC)
The U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, Section 1, Clause 1, directs that all persons born in the United States are U.S. citizens. This is the case regardless of the tax or immigration status of a person's parents. It states (archived here) that:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States ... are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
H. Jefferson Powell, a professor who teaches constitutional law at Duke University School of Law (archived here), responded to a question from Lead Stories asking if the president of the United States could enact an executive order that would, in effect, surpass the 14th Amendment in requirements for citizenship. He responded in a December 9, 2024, email:
No, no executive order can deprive someone born in this country and under its jurisdiction of his or her citizenship, and I think the jurisdiction requirement is satisfied with respect to someone born here even if one -- or both -- parents is a noncitizen and even if the noncitizen is undocumented.
Powell explained:
The text of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states that "All persons born in the United States ... and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." Leaving aside some issues about one or two US insular possessions, this is a constitutional mandate that anyone who meets two criteria - he or she was born physically in the US, and was subject to US jurisdiction when born - is a citizen.
Neither Congress nor the president nor any state can affect that status, and longstanding Supreme Court precedent establishes that a citizen cannot be deprived of his or her citizenship against that person's will even as a punishment for crime. There are NO legal methods for depriving a citizen of her citizenship.
He continued:
A constitutional mandate can only be modified or repealed by a constitutional amendment. Article V of the Constitution provides several means by which that can be done, but with the exception of the 21st amendment, only one method has ever been used: 2/3 of both houses of Congress must concur on the text on the proposed amendment, and it must be ratified by ¾ of the state legislatures.
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More Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Donald Trump are here.
