WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday he wants to end birthright citizenship in the United States, promising to follow through on his campaign pledge to abolish the country's practice of granting citizenship to all people born on U.S. soil as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. 

What You Need To Know

  • President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he wants to end birthright citizenship in the United States, promising to follow through on his campaign pledge
  • Birthright citizenship is guaranteed to people born in the United States by the 14th Amendment
  • It’s a proposal pushed by Republicans, including Trump, for years in a bid to prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from gaining U.S. citizenship
  • It’s not clear if the president-elect's desired outcome could be achieved through executive action or even congressional action — constitutional amendments require approval by two-thirds majorities in Congress and ratification by three-fourths of states
  • But Trump and Republican lawmakers say they are going to try anyway

It’s a proposal pushed by Republicans, including Trump, for years in a bid to prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from gaining U.S. citizenship. Trump’s primary rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — who will advise Trump’s next administration — both supported an end to the constitutional right during the GOP presidential primary. And key Trump allies in the House and Senate have proposed legislation in recent years to end the practice, including the prominent Republican Study Committee in 2019 led by now-Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

It’s not clear whether the president-elect's desired outcome could be achieved through executive action or even congressional action — constitutional amendments require approval by two-thirds majorities in Congress and ratification by three-fourths of states. But Trump said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday he would attempt to do so through executive action, although he did not divulge specifics nor directly answer a question about how his incoming administration would get around legal challenges to any attempt at changing birthright citizenship.

“We’re going to have to get it changed. We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it,” Trump said, falsely claiming the United States is “the only country that has” birthright citizenship. He called the system “ridiculous” and accused it of “killing our country.”

He also said he would deport entire families if the parents were immigrants even if the children have legal status. Trump has promised mass deportations of millions of people.

“I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump said, later adding, “We’ll send the whole family, very humanely, back to the country where they came.”

The 14th Amendment was proposed and ratified in the aftermath of the Civil War with the intention of protecting the rights of freed slaves. Its first clause guaranteed the right to citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The 1898 Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark set the precedent that being born on U.S. soil qualifies an individual for citizenship under the 14th Amendment. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., introduced legislation in September that would limit the scope of the 14th Amendment to exclude the children of undocumented immigrants and said Sunday he was working on a constitutional amendment to end the practice. In June, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton introduced similar legislation, co-sponsored by Vice President-elect JD Vance and four other prominent Republican senators, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Utah Sen. Mike Lee.

On Sunday, in response to Trump’s statements on “Meet the Press,” Lee advocated for the idea and argued the Republican majorities in Congress could limit birthright citizenship without having to go through the constitutional amendment process.

“Congress has the power to define what it means to be born in the United States ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” he wrote on the social media platform X. “​​Congress could pass a law defining what it means to be born in the United States ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ excluding prospectively from birthright citizenship individuals born in the U.S. to illegal aliens.”

Prominent Democrats, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House lawmakers, denounced Trump’s pledge to go forward with his plans.

“This is completely un-American,” wrote Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of House Democrats’ Progressive Caucus. “The 14th Amendment guarantees birthright citizenship. Trump cannot unilaterally end it, and any attempt to do so would be both unconstitutional and immoral.”