President Donald Trump is attempting to rewrite the Constitution without amending it, one executive order at a time. One of his biggest targets: the birthright citizenship that has defined American identity for over 150 years.
On Thursday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s order, which had directed federal departments to deny birthright citizenship from children born to mothers and fathers who are not legal American citizens. Now, a class-action suit on behalf of children and parents impacted by Trump’s order will proceed.
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By attacking birthright citizenship, Trump not only strikes fear in the hearts of many Americans—such as myself—he also threatens to unravel the thread that binds all Americans together. Indeed, my story of birthright citizenship illustrates how tenuous, and sometimes arbitrary, the process of becoming a “real” American can be.
I was born in the Philippines. Whenever asked the inevitable “Where are you from?” questions that every Asian American knows, I would deflect by telling people I was born in an American military hospital in the Philippines. I always added that my father was a tall, blond, blue-eyed man from California to ensure people understood he was a “real” American.
This response usually ended the questioning. So deeply embedded are the concepts of jus soli (“right of the soil”) and jus sanguinis (“right of the blood”) in our American psyche that these explanations satisfied most people’s need to categorize my belonging.
But when I recently checked my birth certificate, I learned I was born in a regular Philippine hospital, and not a military hospital as I’d believed. I had not received birthright citizenship on the grounds of being born on American soil.
Four years ago, a DNA test revealed that the man I’d called “dad” my entire life wasn’t my biological father. My American citizenship—which I so greatly value—relied on a 1968 legal presumption that children born in wedlock belonged to the husband, no DNA proof was required.
My citizenship hung by a thread I never knew existed. But others are not as fortunate as I.
Consider Jermaine Thomas. Thomas was born on a U.S. Army base in Germany in 1986 to an American soldier who served his country for 18 years. In May 2025, Thomas was deported to Jamaica, a country he’s never seen. Despite being born to a naturalized American citizen on what most people consider American soil, the courts ruled that Thomas wasn’t an American citizen. His father hadn’t met the requirement for 10 years of residency in the U.S. to pass citizenship to children born abroad. Turns out, military bases abroad aren’t actually U.S. territory, so they don’t count toward residency for citizenship purposes.
Like Thomas, I’d tied my sense of American belonging to what I thought was an unbreakable thread. Unlike him, my thread held through bureaucratic rules and legal presumptions that determined our vastly different fates.
Still, people see my Asian face and doubt whether I am American. “Where are you really from?” they ask. When you’ve spent your life fighting to be recognized as a “real” American, you learn to recognize patterns of othering of those who are not white.
This pattern is one which supporters of Trump’s immigration policies have embraced with open arms.
For instance, the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” increased the ICE budget by tenfold. In a jubilant response, far-right commentator Benny Johnson wrote on social media: “We’re about to see an American ‘Deportation Machine’ on steroids. The Great Replacement died today.” The Great Replacement is a white nationalist conspiracy theory that claims there’s a deliberate plot to replace white Americans with non-white immigrants through immigration and higher birth rates.
Trump’s week-one halt of all refugee flights, except for white South Africans, sent another clear message about what it means to be American. The administration also terminated protective status for thousands of Afghan refugees, allies who risked their lives for American forces during our longest war. These interpreters, guides, and support staff who served alongside U.S. troops now face deportation back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where they’re marked for death. Even risking your life for America isn’t enough if you’re the wrong color.
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh made the subtext explicit in a social media post praising the South African refugees: “They’re productive members of society and they speak English. In every measurable way, they’re a better cultural fit than the waves of so-called ‘refugees’ we’ve welcomed by the boatload for decades.”
My mother’s family arrived as Vietnamese refugees in 1975, when over half of Americans opposed their resettlement. “They bring only disease, corruption, and apathy,” one constituent wrote to Congress. Yet President Gerald Ford understood our values differently. “To ignore the refugees in their hour of need would be to repudiate the values we cherish as a nation of immigrants,” he wrote. If Trump had been President then, my family may have been turned away and my uncles, who’d fought alongside American forces, would have faced persecution or death in Vietnam.
If not for the thread connecting me to my American citizenship, I might not have lived the flourishing life I have lived in the U.S. since I was 5, enjoying a freedom and prosperity that wouldn’t have been available to me in Vietnam, or anywhere else in the world. When you’ve spent your life defending your Americanness against those who see your Asian face and assume you’re foreign, seeing how tenuous that citizenship is can make you feel betrayed by your country.
For decades, birthright citizenship has protected us from those who might wish to pick and choose who gets to be American. Now, this fundamental principle is at risk of being eroded.
This erosion affects every American, not just immigrants or people of color. If presidential interpretation can override constitutional text, if executive orders can redefine citizenship categories, what other rights become negotiable?
For those of us who’ve always had to prove our belonging, the threat feels immediate and visceral. It won’t matter how well I speak English or how well I have culturally assimilated, my Asian face will always mark me as someone whose citizenship could be questioned, whose belonging could be revoked with the stroke of a pen.
As we approach the 250th birthday of our country, we must ensure that no child who qualifies for citizenship under the 14th Amendment will ever be categorized as an “other.” The 14th Amendment was written to guarantee that birthright needs no asterisks, no conditions, no politician’s interpretation.