A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order denying US citizenship to children born in the country to unauthorised immigrants, dealing a blow to an immigration clampdown that is a top priority of his second presidency.
Residents of the states who filed the lawsuit led by Washington are “irreparably harmed by depriving them of their constitutional right to citizenship” and by “subjecting them to risk of deportation and family separation; depriving them of access to federal funding for medical care . . . and impacting their education, employment, and health”, John Coughenour, a US district judge in the state of Washington, wrote in the restraining order issued on Thursday.
The decision will remain in effect pending a final ruling in the courts.