Former White House aide Sebastian Gorka backed President Donald Trump's plan to end birthright citizenship through executive order. Gorka claimed, without providing any evidence, that there was an "industry" of people purposely coming to the U.S. to have babies, without providing evidence.
Appearing on Fox Business network's Lou Dobbs Tonight on October 30, Gorka said that Trump would be able to successfully push through his plans to revoke the right to citizenship for children born to non-U.S. citizens on American soil, as the president has "won every single battle so far."
"If you look at the moratorium on travel, he went all the way to the Supreme Court and he won that one as well. So this is his prerogative," Gorka said. "His victory in 2016, Lou, for me, is the revenge of common sense and this is just another common-sense measure.
"There is an industry, in baby factories, people coming here to have babies, and then they get citizenship. If the founding fathers had known about this they would have had another amendment to make sure that there is—this is just wrong, Lou," Gorka said.
Gorka is then interrupted by fellow guest Lawrence Jones, editor in chief of Campus Reform, a conservative news website focused on higher education, who asked him: "But you know what is a reality as well, Sebastian? The Republicans asked us for the House, the Senate and Presidency. They said they would secure the border and fix this problem. This should not be executive orders to get this done. Why the hell did we send them there to do a job if they can't do it?"
During the same segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight, Lawrence suggested that Trump was not "doing himself a favor" by bringing up the proposal.
"First of all, it's going to go the Supreme Court and judges like [John] Roberts and [Brett] Kavanaugh are not going to vote on the president's side on this. They will side with the liberals. It's a losing strategy."
Trump's claim that remove birthright citizenship via executive order has been dismissed by legal experts, civil rights groups and even House Speaker Paul Ryan.
"The 14th Amendment's citizenship guarantee is clear," Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, told Newsweek. "This is a transparent and blatantly unconstitutional attempt to sow division and fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms."
Trump has also been criticized for falsely claiming the U.S. was the only country in the world that provided such rights, despite dozens of other countries, including neighboring Canada, also guaranteeing birthright citizenship.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
