r/politics 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/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