"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment," Trump told Axios on the HBO network Monday. "Guess what? You don't. Number one. Number one you don't need that. Number two, you could definitely do it with an act of Congress. Now, they're saying I can do it just with an executive order."
"We're the only country in the world where a person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all those benefits. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, and it has to end," the president continued.
However, on Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) told WVLK Radio that the president was mistaken on his understanding of constitutional law: since birthright citizenship comes from the 14th Amendment, it can only be removed by another constitutional amendment.
"You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order," Ryan told WVLK Radio, as quoted by The Washington Post.
That's only been done once before: the 21st Amendment ended the Prohibition era, during which alcohol sales were prohibited in the US, which was created by the 18th Amendment.
Such a change requires not only that two-thirds of Congress pass it in a vote, but also 38 of the 50 US states have to sign off on the idea (which entails two-thirds of each of their state legislatures passing the amendment, too). As such, it's a long, drawn-out process that doesn't happen overnight but typically takes several years, if not longer.
The 14th Amendment was one of the Reconstruction amendments, passed in 1868 during the country's reorganization after the end of the 1861-5 Civil War and the subsequent end of slavery in the US, which saw about 3 million formerly enslaved African-Americans become US citizens. Among other rights and protections, the amendment stipulates that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
Vice President Mike Pence also commented on the issue, saying that the Supreme Court has never clarified the question of birthright citizenship and how it applies "to people who are in the country illegally."
Trump aims to end this right in order to disincentivize immigrants coming to the US, since under its stipulations, children born on US soil are automatically citizens, regardless of the citizenship status of their parents.
Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear spoke with Juan Carlos Ruiz, cofounder of New Sanctuary Coalition, about Trump's proposal and what it represents in the greater context of US politics under the Trump administration.
Trump tweeted Monday to the inbound refugees to "please go back… our military is waiting for you."
Ruiz told Sputnik that the troop deployment was an attempt to gain political capital, noting that by doing so, "they are normalizing such force. We need to decry this attempt with the purpose of gaining the upper hand as we vote in the midterm elections."
However, Ruiz noted that Mexican human rights champion Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra has decried the direction of the caravan by "United States interest groups," as Ruiz put it, "for the Republicans to get a better grip in terms of the midterm elections."
Solalinde said on Monday that recommending that the caravan travelers go north to the US border instead of settling in Mexico is "to recommend that they go to the slaughterhouse," Proceso.com reported. He condemned the poor organization of the caravan as creating unnecessary danger for the refugees.
"They already know, and they do not talk about going to the United States anymore, because they know that there they will not achieve anything, and if someone leaves [the caravan] it is because of their risk and on their own. We are talking about that they will seek an integration to our country in Mexico City," the human rights activist told La Razon Tuesday.
The organization Pueblo sin Fronteras, one of the groups that organized the caravan, condemned Solalinde's comments Tuesday, portraying the caravan as self-organized and rejecting his claims that they are directing it.
However, freelance multimedia journalist Cady Voge told Radio Sputnik last week that groups like Pueblo sin Fronteras "started organizing these caravans to organize people in groups, saying, ‘There's power in numbers.'"
"Criminal groups control a lot of those routes," she told By Any Means Necessary, indicating that when migrants traveled in caravans instead of individually, they were far less susceptible to narco-traffickers and the abuses of "coyotes" — hired guides.
"We have to connect the dots," Ruiz said Tuesday, between criminalizing the refugees in the caravan and the "very dangerous proposal" to do away with naturalization in the US.