three days After arriving at the White House with a radical agenda to transform the United States, the president Donald Trump has suffered this Thursday his first setback in the courts. A federal judge ha Temporarily paralyzed the application nationwide of the executive order that the Republican signed on Monday by which removes the right of citizenship from the children of undocumented immigrants who are born in the United States, breaking with a historical precedent and with a right contained in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
“Es blatantly unconstitutional”, the district judge has ruled in the state of Washington John C. Coughenour, who was nominated for his position by the Republican Ronald Reagan and who has shown disbelief that the order was even written, which has left on hold for now for 14 days.
“I have been in the judiciary for four decades and “I cannot remember another case in which the issue presented was so clear,” he said at the hearing, which lasted 25 minutes. “Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?” “It is difficult for me to understand how no member of the legal profession with the right to practice can declare that this order is constitutional,” he also said incredulously.
The case
The executive order It is one of the most controversial of the 26 that Trump signed on his first day in the White House. Included in its salvo in immigration matters, where it has arrived with an iron fist, it removes the right of citizenship by birth from both children born in the country of parents without legal residency or citizenship documents like those of those who are in the countrylegally but with temporary permits such as work or study visas. It stipulates that starting 30 days from the signing of the decree, on Monday, passports or other US documents, such as a social security number, that recognize citizenship, must stop being issued.
The order was immediately challenged in court. and six lawsuits were filed by various civil rights groupsattorneys general of 22 states and pregnant women. The case that has come before Judge Coughenour is that of Washington, Illinois, Oregon and Arizona.
Lawyers for those states have argued that Trump’s decree would deny rights and benefits to nearly 150,000 children born each year in the United States to parents without legal documents. “They will be left undocumented, subject to expulsion or detention, and many will be stateless personsthat is to say, citizens of any country“, they have stated, and have denounced the “situation of instability and insecurity“in which they would remain” for life as part of a new underclass in the USA”.
Anticipation of a turbulent mandate
The decision this Thursday and on this case is the first sign of what is anticipated to mark Trump’s presidency: a intense battle between the executive, legislative and judicial branches where it will be resolved if the system of democratic checks and balances is enough to stop the Republican’s expansionist and absolutist interpretation of executive power.
