BY SAMUEL LÓPEZ · USA HERALD · LEGAL ANALYSIS & INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING

The debate over birthright citizenship just got a whole lot more complicated — and a whole lot more urgent. And it came from the last place the political establishment expected.

The Pew Research Center, one of the most well-respected and broadly liberal-leaning polling and research organizations in the country, just handed President Donald Trump a significant piece of ammunition in his fight to reshape the 14th Amendment's application to birthright citizenship. Their findings are striking, and if you haven't read them yet, you need to — because the Supreme Court of the United States is weighing this right now.

According to the Pew study, roughly 320,000 babies were born to illegal migrant mothers in the United States in 2023 alone. That's approximately 9% of all 3.6 million births recorded in this country that year. Let that number breathe for a moment. Nearly one in ten babies born in America in 2023 was born to a mother who was in this country illegally. Dig deeper into those numbers and you find that about 245,000 of those children also had fathers who were not citizens or lawful permanent residents. These aren't just statistics. These are the raw data points at the center of one of the most consequential constitutional battles in modern American history.

Trump signed an executive order aimed at ending what the administration calls "birth tourism" — the practice of pregnant women traveling to the United States specifically to give birth on U.S. soil so their child automatically receives American citizenship.

For historical and legal context, the controlling precedent on birthright citizenship — the case every modern challenge must confront — is: United States v. Wong Kim Ark. That case held that a child born in the United States to non-citizen parents (who were lawfully present) is a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment. It’s the backbone of current doctrine.

The administration argues that the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment rewards illegal immigration and incentivizes the circumvention of U.S. immigration law. The Supreme Court is now being asked to rule on whether children born to temporary visitors and illegal migrants should be automatically granted citizenship at birth.

If Trump's executive order had been in effect from 2006 through 2023, it would have affected an estimated 5.1 million individuals born in the United States to illegal migrant mothers, and 4.4 million more who had illegal migrant fathers. The order would also affect children born to mothers on temporary legal status — women who were technically in the country lawfully at the time of birth but who were not full citizens. And in 2023 alone, roughly 9,000 children were born to what the study identifies as "birth tourists." These are not conspiracy theories. These are documented numbers from a source that no one can credibly dismiss as right-wing or politically motivated.

Now here is where the story gets deeper, and where I want every one of you reading this to pause and do your own research — because the amendment at the center of all of this, the 14th Amendment, has a history that most Americans have never been taught, and the men who wrote it deserve far more scrutiny than they have ever received.

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and it was primarily drafted by a Republican congressman named John Bingham. He is widely credited as the principal author of Section 1 — the section that guarantees citizenship, due process, and equal protection under the law. His legal thinking became the constitutional foundation that governs civil rights litigation to this day. The amendment was formally introduced in Congress by Thaddeus Stevens in the House and managed in the Senate by Jacob Howard. These three men — Bingham, Stevens, and Howard — shaped a constitutional provision that has governed American citizenship for over 150 years.

But here is the question I want you to sit with: how much do we actually know about John Bingham? How much do we know about the full intent behind the language he wrote? What did Bingham himself believe about whether the citizenship clause was meant to apply to the children of foreign nationals who were not subject to U.S. jurisdiction in any permanent or legal sense?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the exact questions historians, constitutional scholars, and the Supreme Court justices themselves are wrestling with. And the answers may not be what you have been told.

Trump has argued — and many constitutional originalists agree — that the 14th Amendment was designed specifically to grant citizenship to the children and descendants of enslaved people following the Civil War. It was a moral and legal response to the injustices of slavery and the denial of basic human rights to an entire class of people who had been born on American soil but denied the protections of citizenship.

The courts have since [extended that interpretation] to cover the children of all immigrants, documented or otherwise, based on a reading of the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." But whether that extended interpretation reflects the actual original intent of Bingham and his colleagues is a debate that is very much alive — and the Supreme Court may soon settle it.

Pew's global analysis adds yet another layer to this debate. Of the countries studied, only 52 allow a child to gain citizenship simply by being born on their soil. The United States established birthright citizenship in 1868, but most of the world has not followed its lead. In most countries, citizenship flows from the citizenship of the parents, not from the geographic location of birth.

Another 17 of the countries that do allow birthright citizenship require that the parents also be residing in the country legally. And 26 countries go even further, requiring at least two generations of in-country birth before the citizenship transfers. The United States, under its current interpretation, stands nearly alone in offering unconditional birthright citizenship regardless of the legal status of the parents.

This is a story about law, history, sovereignty, and identity. It is a story about what America is, who belongs to it, and who gets to decide. And it is a story that the Pew Research Center — whether it intended to or not — just made significantly harder to dismiss.

Do your research. Understand the 14th Amendment. Learn about John Bingham and the world he was living in when he drafted it. Ask yourself whether the men who wrote those words in 1868 could have anticipated a world where birth tourism is a documented industry and where nearly one in ten American births is to a mother living in the country without legal status. And then ask yourself whether a 156-year-old amendment, written for one very specific historical purpose, is being applied exactly the way its authors intended — or whether the Supreme Court is about to make history.

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