Trump Launched a Backup Birthright Citizenship Plan at Almost the Exact Moment SCOTUS Betrayed America
The Supreme Court seems to regard the Constitution as designed to benefit everyone except Americans.
But that’s OK, for the Constitution is above the Supreme Court, and We the People are above the Constitution. We created it. So we may amend it. Or, we may instruct our elected representatives to make it effectual via laws and executive actions.
With that in mind, on Tuesday — the same day SCOTUS erroneously ruled that the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment applies to foreigners who exploit it in order to secure birthright citizenship for their children — President Donald Trump’s Justice Department issued a memorandum emphasizing the need to prosecute birth-tourism schemes.
“I am directing all United States Attorneys and the Criminal Division to work with the Department of Homeland Security to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of birth tourism schemes,” Deputy Attorney General Colin M. McDonald wrote in the memorandum to to all DOJ employees, dated Tuesday and posted to the social media platform X.
McDonald also identified three recent examples of birth-tourism schemes originating in different parts of the world and already illegal.
Then, he encouraged prosecutors to seek additional penalties where possible.
“While many of these cases are prosecuted as visa fraud … prosecutors should consider whether other federal statutes are violated as part of such schemes.”
The deputy attorney general then suggested other charges such as “Wire Fraud and Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud”; “Money Laundering and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering”; “Unlawful Use of Means of Identification”; “Aggravated Identity Theft”; and “Conspiracy to Commit Health Care Fraud.”
In other words, Trump’s DOJ announced a serious crackdown on birth-tourism schemes.
Memorandum for DOJ Employees on Prosecution of Fraudulent Birth Tourism Schemes from Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/hoilA5o2TE
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) June 30, 2026
And what perfect timing. After all, SCOTUS ruled Tuesday that all children born in America enjoy citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. That includes children of illegal immigrants and others who commit fraud.
“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,” the first line of the Fourteenth Amendment reads.
Of course, those words, written shortly after the Civil War, referred to the newly-freed slaves. They rendered moot SCOTUS’ 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that black people could not obtain U.S. citizenship.
Somehow, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and the three liberal justices interpreted that amendment to mean that anyone born in America, even those whose mothers traveled to the United States under false pretenses and in violation of immigration laws, may enjoy U.S. citizenship.
Meanwhile, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a scathing dissent.
The good news, as always, is that the sovereign people and their representatives may act regardless of what the high court rules, for the Constitution created the Supreme Court, not the other way round, and it created that court as a co-equal branch of government, not as the final word on the Constitution’s meaning.
Thus, the proliferation of birth-tourism schemes amounts to a problem. But the elected branches of government may address that problem. Notwithstanding the lies taught in schools, Congress and the president have the right to interpret their own powers under the Constitution. SCOTUS can neither enlarge nor diminish those powers.
In other words, congressional and presidential acquiescence, not the Constitution’s text, has allowed SCOTUS alone to determine the Constitution’s meaning.
Congress and the president, therefore, must act. After all, We the People have decided that citizenship actually means something regardless of what SCOTUS rules.
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