Tag: administration

CNN
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Liza counted the months until Donald Trump would be president. And she counted the months until her baby was due.

The timing filled her with dread. She’d learned from a friend that Trump planned to end birthright citizenship, right around the time she’d learned she was pregnant.

Last week, the moment she feared came even faster than she expected.

“I was shocked that it happened so quickly. … My world fell apart,” says Liza, a grad student in Texas who’s 24 weeks pregnant. Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship, she says, has thrust her family’s life into uncertainty.

Now the mass communications student from Russia is part of a group of pregnant moms – and advocacy organizations who represent them – who are fighting back.

“We have to do it for us, for our baby, and for all the other people like us,” she told CNN.

The federal lawsuit Liza and others filed is among a number of legal challenges arguing the ban violates the Constitution and longstanding legal precedent. Ultimately, the Supreme Court could have the final say.

Advocates argue the mothers’ voices particularly convey the urgency and significance of this moment.

“The executive order is already creating chaos in immigrant communities,” says Conchita Cruz, executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP). The organization is also a plaintiff in the case, and Cruz says its members include numerous families who would be impacted by the ban.

CNN has reached out the Justice Department for comment on the lawsuit. In response to another federal lawsuit over the order filed in Seattle, administration officials have argued that the 14^th Amendment only grants birthright citizenship “to those persons born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction — and thus excludes children of noncitizens here illegally as well as children of temporary visaholders.”

In their lawsuit filed in federal court in Maryland, Liza and other plaintiffs argue that the government’s interpretation “violates long-settled law” and unjustly denies citizenship to US-born children who “are plainly ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States.”

Losing birthright citizenship wouldn’t be merely a bureaucratic matter, according to Liza, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears she could face persecution for speaking out. On top of the stress of pregnancy, she says, she now finds herself worrying that her baby won’t be able to get health care or go to school, or that the child could even face deportation someday. Getting a birth certificate from the Russian Embassy wouldn’t be an option, she says, as her husband is seeking asylum and they fear persecution from the Russian government.

“My baby will be stateless,” she says.

Liza says she fears returning to a country she fled in 2023 – and now fears for the future of her unborn child in a country that feels more unwelcoming by the day.

“It looks like my baby will have less rights than I have,” she says. “You feel unwelcome in your own country. You come here for opportunities. You come here to study, to change the world. … And then it’s all for nothing. They clearly tell you that they do not want you here.”

She thought she’d found safety and stability in the US. Now nothing seems certain

Mónica, a doctor from Venezuela who’s living in South Carolina, thought she and her husband had finally found stability in the United States six years after arriving.

“We’ve been trying to do everything the right way,” she says. “We’ve been working, we have been paying taxes and we actually were able to buy our own home.”

The moment seemed right to have a child, Mónica told reporters last week.

“Time was passing, and this was something that was important to us. And we had reached a point of stability in this country,” she said.

And now at 12 weeks pregnant, she says she should be focusing on her baby’s health.

But lately, she says her thoughts have been consumed by other worries.

“Instead, my husband and I are stressed, we’re anxious and we’re depressed about the reality that my child may not be able to become a US citizen,” says Mónica, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym to protect her safety.

Further complicating matters, it isn’t clear whether Trump’s executive order applies to her. Monica has Temporary Protected Status, which allows her to legally work in the US, and she’s applying for asylum. If she wins her case, she would eventually become a legal permanent resident of the US. But there’s no telling how long that process will take, she says.

“I’ve been waiting for many years, and I might be waiting for another 10 years before they even call me for an interview, it seems,” she says.

In the meantime, she says, she also fears her child will be stateless. The Venezuelan Embassy in the US has been closed for years.

“I don’t know what will happen. … and I don’t understand how it is that my child could be treated differently than other children,” she says. “It should be a right for him to be born in the United States and get US citizenship.”

Barbara was a lawyer in Cuba, and she’s always liked the idea of fighting injustice. Now, about two years after arriving in the US, she’s working as a school custodian in Kentucky while seeking asylum in the US. And she’s about four months pregnant. Being listed among the impacted ASAP members in a legal filing, she says, has given her strength.

“Everything that’s in my hands, I’m going to do,” she says. “I want to support this cause because really it’s the children who are being harmed by this, it’s the pregnant women who are going to receive this stress, it’s the families of so many immigrants that are going to be affected.”

Barbara asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her family’s safety. The stress of handling pregnancy while also worrying about whether the baby girl she’ll have this summer will be a US citizen is overwhelming, she says.

“After they announced it, I couldn’t sleep. It’s a double concern,” she says. “I feel like they can suddenly steal my baby’s future.”

It’s a sharp contrast to the supportive environment that Barbara says she, her husband and her 4-year-old daughter have found in Kentucky.

“There’s a huge Hispanic community,” she says, including many Cubans. And Barbara says they feel at home.

“My dream is to settle permanently in this country,” she says, “and with God’s blessing, to have our family and a peaceful life.”

In the days since the lawsuit was filed, Liza says she’s found herself mulling many questions.

Chief among them: “How do these kids hurt Trump?”

She says it’s difficult to understand why the US president would target her unborn child and so many others.

“It’s not making anyone’s life better — not mine, not my family’s, not the people who voted for Trump,” she says. “I would just like people to understand that. Hurting someone does not make your life better.”

A better life is what Liza says she dreams of for her own child.

“The baby will be bilingual. I think that’s a big thing. There will be so many opportunities for the baby. And in the US…if you work hard, you will get what you deserve,” she says.

The future for a child in this country, she says, is still bright.

Despite all the uncertainty of this moment, Liza says that’s one thing she knows.

CNN’s Tierney Sneed and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.