320,000 anchor babies. That's how many children were born in the United States in 2023 to mothers in the country illegally or on temporary legal status, roughly 9 percent of every birth recorded that year, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. Of those, 260,000 would not have qualified for U.S. citizenship under President Trump's executive order.
That number is now sitting directly in front of the Supreme Court.
The case, Trump v. Barbara, stems from an executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office, restricting birthright citizenship to children with at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. The Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this month, turning a decades-long political fight into a decision with immediate, measurable consequences.
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Supreme Court Will Hear Arguments on Crucial Case Wednesday — and Trump Says He Will Be There
Pew’s breakdown shows how concentrated the issue has become. About 245,000 of those births were to mothers in the country illegally, where the father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident, while another 15,000 involved mothers with temporary legal status under similar circumstances. Under Trump’s order, those children would not automatically receive citizenship if the policy is upheld.
The numbers have been climbing. Anchor baby births have increased for three consecutive years, tracking directly with the surge in the illegal and temporary-status population.
"Under the current erroneous birthright citizenship interpretation, these children automatically become citizens and unlock food stamps, welfare, specialized schooling for English education, and eventually college aid," said Brandy Perez Carbaugh of the Heritage Foundation.
That argument centers on incentives and downstream costs, with critics saying the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment creates benefits that extend well beyond citizenship itself.
"High volumes of illegal and temporary aliens are having children in the U.S. because they are exploiting the decades-old erroneous interpretation that such children are U.S. citizens," Carbaugh added.
The 2023 total is the highest since 2010, when 325,000 anchor babies were born, and the trend is moving in the wrong direction.
Trump attended the arguments in person, the first sitting president on record to do so.
“I’m going, because I have listened to this argument for so long,” Trump said ahead of the hearing.
Leftist pundits predictably clutched their pearls, accusing Trump of trying to intimidate the judiciary.
Lower courts have predictably blocked the order, hiding behind the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment. But Trump's argument is straightforward: that interpretation was never what the amendment's authors intended. Ratified in 1868 to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves, the 14th Amendment was not written to hand automatic citizenship to the children of anyone who could make it across the border.
The justices are now deciding whether that reading holds. Nearly one in ten U.S. births falls into a category that could be affected by the ruling, and that number has been growing every year.
If the court sides with Trump, the change will be immediate and historic. Automatic citizenship at birth, a benefit that has been exploited on an industrial scale, would be over. The only question is whether the Court has the backbone to say so.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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