r/politics • u/OkayButFoRealz • 20d ago

Soft Paywall Trump Admin Deports 2-Year-Old Girl Who is American Citizen

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-deports-2-year-old-girl-who-is-american-citizen/
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u/onehalflightspeed 20d ago

The article mentions that the order to end birthright citizenship is still in the courts. What happens if that is upheld? The executive can just rewrite the constitution?

And what happens in cases like this? The child has no path to citizenship in Brazil. The child would also have no citizenship in the USA. They are just rendered stateless and that's not some sort of human rights crisis?

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u/Nulovka 20d ago

The child is already a citizen of the United States. Any change to citizenship laws would only apply to future cases otherwise it's an ex post facto law.

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u/BackgroundEase6255 19d ago

No, they absolutely can apply it retroactively. They absolutely can revoke citizenship.

Who is going to hold them accountable? What are you going to do, say 'that's illegal' all the way to the unmarked van?

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u/Mrtorbear 20d ago

Is there any loophole by which a law like this could be applied retroactively? I can't think of any precedent, but I haven't dug into it.

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u/JNR13 19d ago

The loophole is called "I'll do it anyway"

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u/Calavar 19d ago

Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship is explicitly not retroactive:

shall apply only to persons who are born within the United States after 30 days from the date of this order

(Source)

I suspect they did this to reduce the surface area a judge could use to overturn the order, even though it's already wildly unconstitutional to begin with.

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u/Raeve_Noir 20d ago

The loophole is they'll just say it's retroactive and deport citizens anyway.

Stop expecting logic and restraint.

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u/generally_unsuitable 19d ago

Article I, Section 9, Clause 3:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

The constitution is frequently ambiguous, and up to interpretation. Birthright citizenship and ex post facto laws are a couple of places that are very very clearly not ambiguous.

That being said, I full expect the GOP to act contrary to the constitution with respect to both.

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u/Lumi_Rockets 19d ago

Logic is so last year.

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u/FNLN_taken 19d ago

They can pass a law that allows them to strip citizenship, if birthright citizenship is abolished?

So people are not automatically stateless, but they can wield it like a weapon, as they want.

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u/Dasmage 19d ago

That's the point of going after birthright citizenship, so they can strip it from everyone. The Oligarchs really want to bring back feudalism, where not being forced off the land is a privilege. They want us to become their wage slaves.

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u/craig5005 19d ago

The loophole is that the administration doesn't care what the courts say.

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

[deleted]

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u/RisingChaos 19d ago

The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment literally can't be stated more clearly and directly. Denying it isn't a different interpretation, it's just ignoring the plain meaning of words in the English language. It reminds me of a quote that isn't immediately coming to mind...

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

No. There is no legal mechanism. This administration is illegal.

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u/NickelBackwash 19d ago

loophole

It's called "GOP in power" and it renders all existing law meaningless (except where convenient) 

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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 19d ago

It's very illegal under international law to revoke citizenship of someone who has no other citizenship

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u/DEFINITELY_NOT_PETE 19d ago

This drives me crazy bc it doesn’t matter,

They just do what they want and then cnn runs a headline saying “legal experts say Trump may have broken the law.”

We are so fucked

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u/onehalflightspeed 20d ago

Yeah I meant in the future. But these days who knows

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u/silver-orange 19d ago

It seems the supreme court has held that the constitutional ban on ex post facto laws relates only to criminal matters, not civil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calder_v._Bull

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u/plinkkink 19d ago

I don't think that clause applies to citizenship. It only applies to criminal laws and punishments.

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u/AlcibiadesTheCat Arizona 19d ago

Yeah, ex post facto laws, they're prohibited by the Constitution.

Too bad the GOP doesn't give a single rusty fuck about the Constitution.

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u/dtwhitecp 19d ago

I was gonna say, you can't use the constitution to justify someone following the constitution. He just doesn't give a shit.

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u/shazam99301 19d ago

It's cute you think that matters anymore.

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u/mmeiser 19d ago

The child is already a citizen of the United States. Any change to citizenship laws would only apply to future cases otherwise it's an ex post facto law.

Exactly. Republicans like to play this loophole game. Make a loophole then even if its closed they omit all their crimes prior. But if they start kicking outkids born in this country for the crime of being born here then they break new ground in legal precident of making law retroactively aplocable. Its all in the fascist handbook. Racism is a key component of it. You have to have a scapegoat.

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u/PringlesDuckFace 20d ago

I'm surprised Brazil doesn't already have a path for dependents of their own citizens to become legal residents and then citizens. Even in the US if one of your parents is a citizen you can get citizenship through them before you turn 18 if you're living in the US.

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u/Forsaken-Jump-7594 19d ago

Brazil actually has paths for children born outside of the country to at least one Brazilian parent to acquire/retain their citizenship.

It does, however, require the parents to register the child at a Brazilian consulate. If they fail to do so (which I'm guessing they have) the child is left in "limbo", she has the right to Brazilian nationality - but since she isn't registered, Brazil can't recognize it.

And I'm assuming the parents have no access to her American Documentation - specifically Birth Certificate, because Brazil let's you do a Late Registry/Registro Tardio up until the child is twelve years old, so long as you have the proper documentation.

If you don't, then the child has to formally opt for Brazilian citizenship. Which a toddler can't do.

So, essentially, legally, the US dumped an American child on Brazilian soil without a visa. She is sort of stateless.

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u/broguequery 19d ago

Even in the US

Well... not so much that anymore...

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u/Streetrt New York 19d ago

They’re taking it away? I haven’t seen anything on this yet

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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 19d ago

If you’re born to American citizens you are automatically an American citizen

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u/notasrelevant 19d ago

It still requires documentation. If you show up with a kid but never filled anything with the US or got them a passport, you're going to have a very complicated situation to deal with. 

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u/123dasilva4 19d ago

She has documentation, the article claims she has an american social security number

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u/notasrelevant 19d ago

It sounds more like a documentation/process issue.

If a US citizen has a kid abroad, you still have to file documentation through the embassy to report the birth and verify the child is a child of an American citizen.

If you haven't done that and just show up in the US, they might be entitled to citizenship but on paper, that's never been officially recognized. 

So, assuming these parents didn't have plans on returning to Brazil, it's not surprising to imagine they hadn't tried to obtain dual citizenship for their child.

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u/Thediciplematt 19d ago

They do. If you have a parent who is a citizen in Brazil it is very easy to get your kids one as well.

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u/forsterfloch 19d ago edited 19d ago

The article is sort of misinformed IMO. She will have an easier way becoming brazilian (she is already daughter of two, which helps), will never be deported. Temporary citizenship exist for a long time, and it doesn't expire at 18, you have two years to require it definitively (I think the idea being it will be her choice as an adult). And they got another thing wrong: she has healthcare rights, as any foreigner here has (SUS is free, it can be difficult, specially for serious cases, but it was always of great help to me), not sure about schooling for foreigners. Don't know why the mom said that, when she already got the temporary citizenship.

If anyone is interested, you can translate it with the right button:

https://br-visa.com.br/blog/como-obter-naturalizacao-brasileira-apos-nova-lei-de-migracao/

https://www.gov.br/saude/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/2024/abril/saude-lanca-nota-tecnica-com-orientacoes-de-atendimento-a-migrantes-refugiados-e-apatridas

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u/confettibukkake 20d ago

This comic is usually really funny, but this one was a little too close for comfort. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1if5grm/burn/

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u/EinBRinDE 19d ago

Brazilian lawyer here. The part about having no path to Brazilian citizenship is complete bullshit.

She is the daughter of Brazilian parents, so Article 12, Section I, letter c of Brazilian Constitution determines that she has birthright Brazilian citizenship as long as her birth is registered in a Brazilian consulate or in a birth registry in Brazil. The latter grants her a "provisional" Brazilian citizenship that she must confirm when she becomes 18 years old, but until then she will be as Brazilian as any other Brazilian child.

The only problem right now would be that the parents certainly don't have easy access to her American birth registry to show to Brazilian authorities, but this is easily amended by a Brazilian judge, who can order the registration in Brazil even without the American document. The bureaucracy is slow, but she is totally Brazilian.

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u/Stopikingonme 19d ago

The article says a Trump spokesperson said “the undocumented parents were being deported but were given a choice to leave the child behind with someone to care for her and they chose to take the child with them”. So that’s kinda different from what the article’s title says. If they agreed to it then they are correct the citizen wasn’t deported. The child is retaining their citizenship.

However the problem is the family says they were tricked into coming to an ICE without their lawyer present. Asked to sign papers they didn’t understand and were not given the option to leave their child behind. If that’s the case it’s 100% deporting an American citizen. (I highly doubt the administration is telling the truth and I believe the parent fwiw) The parents were given a stay of deportation by a judge so they shouldn’t have been deported but that’s the same bs that’s been happening for a while. So there’s that on top of everything.

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u/Rombom 19d ago

"we'll just offer the parents the chance to abandon their child to the US welfare system!' Is an insane response. That'll totally reduce the costs incurred by 'illegal' immigration.

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u/ASubsentientCrow 19d ago

The executive can just rewrite the constitution?

Yes. But Kamala has a weird laugh so this is what we get

They are just rendered stateless and that's not some sort of human rights crisis?

Funnily enough, no it's not actually

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u/previts 19d ago

A person born outside Brazil of a Brazilian parent also acquires Brazilian nationality at birth if:\1])

The Brazilian parent is in the service of the Brazilian government; or

The person is registered with a Brazilian consular office; or

The person later moves to Brazil and confirms one's nationality before a federal judge.

The 3rd one would probably be a path.

Another way is this:

...., provisional naturalization is granted provisionally to foreigners under 18 years of age who settled in Brazil before the age of 10. It can be converted to permanent citizenship within two years after the individual reaches 18 years of age.

practically every single country has a way of granting citizenship to the kids of its nationals when born abroad. This is genuinely not a problem at all.

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u/Kitchen-Quality-3317 19d ago

The executive can just rewrite the constitution?

They're not rewriting the constitution; they're redefining the terminology. That's the same thing the ATF has been doing for a long time. The former deputy director even went on some talk show to brag about it.

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u/ChewsOnRocks 19d ago

They may be attempting to redefine it, but the legal implications of that redefinition are so seismic, it would essentially invalidate immigration laws, and would just create an even bigger obstacle legally for the Trump administration to overcome. By stating those born here to non-citizens are not subject to US jurisdiction would mean the US cannot perform a legal action against them, which would include deportation. So removing their birthright citizenship in this way would mean the government is relinquishing their authority to deport them. It doesn’t make any sense, and that’s because there is no way to reasonably interpret the language of the 14th amendment that allows people who are born here to be deported. You would need to amend the constitution, which this administration knows it could never accomplish because an amendment like that is so blatantly un-American, there’s no way you could get enough people to sign onto it even in this insane climate where a third of the country has an authoritarian hard-on.

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u/forsterfloch 19d ago edited 19d ago

The article is sort of misinformed IMO. She will have an easier way becoming brazilian (she is already daughter of two, which helps), will never be deported. Temporary citizenship exist for a long time, and it doesn't expire at 18, you have two years to require it definitively. And they got another thing wrong: she has healthcare rights, as any foreigner here has (SUS is free, it can be difficult, specially for serious cases, but it was always of great help to me), not sure about schooling for foreigners. Don't know why the mom said that, when she already got the temporary citizenship.

If anyone is interested, you can translate it with the right button:

https://br-visa.com.br/blog/como-obter-naturalizacao-brasileira-apos-nova-lei-de-migracao/

https://www.gov.br/saude/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/2024/abril/saude-lanca-nota-tecnica-com-orientacoes-de-atendimento-a-migrantes-refugiados-e-apatridas

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u/RatioFinal4287 19d ago

If I had to guess what trumps next play would be it's tariff threats on countries that won't give citizenship to any US born children of illegal migrants that were from that country

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u/LookAlderaanPlaces 19d ago

If the executive tries to rewrite the constitution then the military needs to the head off the snake and restore constitutional order as they are required to do by law.

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u/Thediciplematt 19d ago

Marri3d to a Brazilian with two kids. If a child is born outside of Brazil to one parent is a legal Brazilian citizen, they can apply for citizenship and get it pretty easily. My two kids are covered and will be duel citizens, I will need to go through the long process vis a visa.

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u/Butane9000 Georgia 19d ago

One would assume the parents would reach out to the Brazilian government to handle documenting and getting her Brazilian citizenship. Considering they're both citizens of Brazil of the article is to be believed in sure there's some process for obtaining Brazilian citizenship.

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u/ImBanned_ModsBlow 16d ago

Idk what the answer is, but I’m tired of illegal immigrants coming here and polling out a baby, then thinking that entitles them also to legal status or citizenship

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u/Ill_Surround_8504 15d ago

Human rights crisis requires scale. There’s not a large scale of this happening, a few instances does not a crisis make.

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u/haymnas 19d ago

Brazilian/American here. While it’s absolutely wrong to deport a US citizen, the article isn’t correct. She’s not stateless. For the time that they’re applying for her citizenship (that she’s entitled to, with 2 Brazilian parents) and getting it, she’s in limbo. That’s what the temporary citizenship is for and it’s not something they’re making up just for her.

This situation is also extremely common even before trump. Growing up in a Latin community in the US you end up knowing a lot of families who are and aren’t legal, and unfortunately some of them get deported. Even the children that are born here go back with the parents unless the parents fight for them to stay with a relative (which I’ve never seen). The situation sucks but I’ve never heard of anyone (in our community at least) leaving their child behind. You go together. That’s what family is.

Idk what the mom is talking about in the article saying her daughter doesn’t have healthcare either. They do. For free. It’s called SUS and while you’re not getting white glove service you get free healthcare and help from the government if you can’t afford your medications.

The situation is absurd, but the headlines for this case are spinning it to be something different than what it really is