No, Barron Trump doesn’t have to worry about his citizenship
President Donald Trump recently revealed plans to sign an executive order that would end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to parents who aren’t citizens. Does that put his own son at risk?
“Fun fact,” starts a post that appeared on Facebook last week. “Barron Trump was born in March 2006 and Melania wasn’t a legal citizen until July 2006. So under this executive order, his own son wouldn’t be an American citizen.”
That post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its news feed. We decided to check it out.
Let’s start with Trump’s youngest child. Barron, who turned 12 on March 20, was indeed born in March 2006. His mother, Trump’s wife, Melania, is from Slovenia. She was working in New York as a model and dating Trump when she applied for a visa in 2000. She secured a green card when her application was approved the following year. On March 20, 2006, she gave birth to Barron in New York and she became a U.S. citizen four months later in July 2006.
The news about Trump targeting birthright citizenship was reported by Axios, which aired an interview with the president last week. It didn’t explain what, exactly, such an executive order would say in this case.
On the campaign trail in 2015, Trump pitched a plan to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. But we don’t yet know the details of a potential executive order to end birthright citizenship, including whether it would apply to children with one parent who is a citizen and another who isn’t.
The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.”
The amendment was ratified in 1868 and was intended to extend citizenship to former slaves who’d been recently freed following the Civil War. The amendment goes on to forbid states from denying anyone “life, liberty or property, without due process of law” or to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Barron Trump, who was born on U.S. soil, is a citizen of the United States, and not just because of the 14th Amendment. Had he been born abroad, he would still be considered a citizen. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has a policy that a child born outside of the United States becomes a citizen at birth if at that time one parent is a foreign national and the other is a U.S. citizen who has been physically present in the country for at least five years, including at least two years after that person turned 14.
Our ruling:
A Facebook post says that “under an executive order” by President Trump to revoke birthright citizenship, Trump’s son Barron “wouldn’t be an American citizen.”
We don’t yet know the details, scope or effect of the executive order Trump may be planning.
But we do know that the 14th Amendment guarantees Barron Trump citizenship. And we do know that even if Barron Trump had been born elsewhere, he would be a U.S. citizen because his father is a U.S. citizen who had been physically present in the U.S. for five years prior to Barron’s birth.
