Babies born in US may lose citizenship as President Trump takes hard stance on immigration

President Donald Trump has disclosed his plan to sign an executive order that would remove the right to citizenship for babies of non-citizens and unauthorised immigrants born on US soil.

The action, which Trump previewed in a television clip broadcast Tuesday, would be the most aggressive by a president elected to office pledging to take a hard line on immigration, an issue he has revived in advance of next week’s midterm elections.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump said during an interview with Axios scheduled to air as part of a new HBO series starting this weekend. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

Chris Coons, a US Senator and Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Tuesday that Trump "was driving a false narrative on immigration"  to stoke fear ahead of the November 6 congressional vote.

The 14th Amendment states that: "all persons born or n

aturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

A legal challenge would prompt the nation's courts to weigh in on what would be one of the most sweeping moves of the Trump administration. It has already targeted immigration through a travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries, child-parent separations for migrants, refugee policies and other actions.