According to the judge, this decree, which Trump has just signed this week, is contrary to Article 14 of the U.S. Constitution and has therefore provisionally repealed it. This article states that the children of the citizens who live there acquire their citizenship. The Republican Party and other conservative associations want to change this, because for them, undocumented migrants take advantage of their children’s births to gain access to papers.
In order for the decree to continue, there are now two ways: on the one hand, Republicans in Congress should amend this article of the Constitution, but for this they would need a large majority that they do not have. The other way is to take the matter to the Supreme Court and win there.
22 Democratic Prosecutors
Prosecutors’ offices in New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin have also appealed this Trump decree to the Federal Court of New Hampshire.
It is estimated that there are between 11 and 14 million non-citizen migrants in the United States, nearly 80% of whom have been there for more than five years. On Tuesday, Trump ordered the Border and Immigration Control Services to begin the expulsion of all of them. The authorities of these states, however, have refused to cooperate with this organization in this task, and Attorney General Emil Bove, appointed by Trump, reminds them that they are required under federal law to cooperate with this organization.
Trump has many tools on his side during this term, including a majority in Congress, and to facilitate his wishes on this immigration issue, Congress passed the Laken Riley Act on Thursday. According to this law, undocumented persons who commit minor offences may be detained by the security forces, which will facilitate their subsequent deportation.
The Mexicans dominate
Despite years of living and working in the U.S., millions of U.S. citizens may be expelled in the coming years. It is estimated that six million of them are provisionally authorized to remain in the United States, of which 2.6 million are awaiting political support and another 300,000 are admitted refugees, mainly Ukrainians and Afghans.
Deportation will mainly affect South Americans. It is estimated that about 40% of undocumented immigrants living in the United States are of Mexican origin. These are the largest migrant community, although in the last 10 years the number of Mexican migrants has decreased and, on the contrary, the number from Venezuela and Colombia has increased considerably.
They'll start with the criminals
The link between migrants and crime is common in xenophobia, and even in Trump’s orders this approach will become the key to starting deportation. According to the U.S. judicial system, there are about 425,000 migrant offenders who will be the first to be expelled. Crimes can be murders, drug trafficking or major robberies, but also very humble crimes, such as ignoring traffic rules. Not staying in front of a stop sign or driving without a driver’s license can make you a criminal in the U.S., depending on your color and origin. And the illegal entry into the country also makes the migrant a criminal: The second largest crime of undocumented immigrants in the United States in 2024 – 18% – was this.
This time Trump wants to make himself the champion of deportation, but in recent years he has not been the one who expelled the most migrants. The biggest deportation in the last fifteen years was carried out by Barack Obama in 2012: 400,000 people. Joe Biden also expelled more than 271,000 in 2024.