WASHINGTON — The legality of President Donald Trump’s ban on automatic birthright citizenship hinges on a single phrase in the 14th amendment, and lawmakers are divided on its correct interpretation.

Republicans and Democrats sparred during a U.S. House Judiciary committee meeting Tuesday over the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” within the Constitution’s citizenship clause, which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

Republican lawmakers argued that “jurisdiction” does not simply mean territorial jurisdiction but full and complete jurisdiction requiring allegiance to the U.S. government. The writers of the 14th amendment never meant to include illegal immigrants and tourists who come to the U.S. explicitly to have children, they further argued, only American citizens and recently freed slaves.

“It devalues the meaning of American citizenship by bestowing it to the children of lawbreakers, who entered the United States without the consent of its people, almost rewarding them for trespassing into our country’s soil,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said.

But for the last 150 years, the clause has guaranteed automatic citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil – with a few exceptions – regardless of whether the mother is residing in the country legally.

Republicans argued this interpretation is incorrect, and that Trump’s executive order merely reiterates existing constitutional law. But Democrats pushed back, pointing to the over a century long precedent and the potential impacts of Trump’s ban, which has so far been blocked by four judges.

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Ranking Member Rep. Mary Scanlon, D-Pa., called the Republican interpretation a “tortured and unconstitutional reading of the English language” and “a blatant and disingenuous attempt to rewrite our nation’s history and the very words of the Constitution.”

Letting the president’s ban stand, she also noted, would establish “a permanent underclass of stateless, not-legally-recognized subjects.”

As of 2017, an estimated 4.5 million children under the age of 18 born to illegal immigrants were living in the U.S., according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform. An estimated 225,000 to 250,000 were born in 2023 alone, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

While Trump’s executive order specified that children of lawful permanent residents are citizens, it excludes Green Card or visa holders. Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., questioned why the Republican definition of jurisdiction – allegiance to the U.S. – does not apply to those people.

“You’re now getting into a situation where the government has to determine which country any individual has more allegiance to – the country that they have immigrated to … or the country of their citizenship,” Goldman said.

“And it baffles me that the Republican Party … would say yes, it is the government’s job to create a definition of allegiance which somehow is required in order for birthright citizenship.”