Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, speaks during a press conference on May 8, 2024. (ALLISON BAILEY/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images)
Immigration and legal experts will testify against the Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship before a key subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary.
The Daily Signal has learned that former acting United States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, and Immigration Accountability Project Policy Director Rosemary Jenks will testify at a Wednesday hearing titled “‘Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof’: Birthright Citizenship and the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Wednesday’s hearing is the second in a series of subcommittee hearings probing the real-world ramifications of birthright citizenship, which was recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Trump v. Barbara.
“The Supreme Court failed the American people,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who chairs the subcommittee, told the Daily Signal. “The 14th Amendment was never meant to turn American soil into a factory for manufacturing U.S. citizenship.”
“Yet that is exactly the dangerous loophole our broken immigration system has allowed to flourish,” Roy continued. “The Supreme Court had an opportunity to put an end to this exploitation and failed to do so.”
Roy, who said he decided to hold the hearing because “Congress cannot afford to sit on the sidelines,” added that the subcommittee is looking to “confront the fundamental question the Court failed to resolve: What does the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment actually mean?”
After the Trump v. Barbara ruling in June, Roy told the Daily Signal that Congress needs to “immediately define the phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ very specifically to make clear that citizenship is tied to the citizenship of the parent, not the soil,” and “completely restrict funding from the Department of Homeland Security or any other agency or state that provides documentation and status to anyone not subject to the ‘jurisdiction thereof.’”
Roy said the Wednesday hearing’s witnesses “will examine its original meaning, expose how it has been exploited, and consider legislative solutions to restore the integrity of American citizenship.”
Meanwhile, conservatives have sought to find ways to crack down on practices like birth tourism, which is when a foreigner travels to the United States to give birth so that the child has American citizenship. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 6 to ban birth tourism.
The House Judiciary Democrats did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.
