Let’s say a child is born this year in Indiana. She is healthy, and her delivery was routine. But when her parents go to register her birth, expecting to receive documented confirmation of her citizenship, they’re instead handed a form that flags her citizenship for federal review. “Provisional status,” someone murmurs. The clerk can’t say when, or even if, her Social Security number will arrive.
Weeks pass, then months. No passport. No birth certificate. No legal confirmation of who she is and where she holds citizenship. And so her life begins in limbo.
For now, at least, this scenario is only hypothetical. But it is dangerously close to becoming a reality for some. In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, directing federal agencies to stop recognizing the citizenship of children born on U.S. soil to undocumented or temporary-status parents. It instructs federal staff to stop issuing the documents—birth certificates, Social Security numbers, passports—that transform constitutional rights into civic reality.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is weighing whether to eliminate or restrict nationwide injunctions, which allow courts to limit the government from enforcing laws whose Constitutionality is being challenged—and which currently serve as the only judicial tool capable of preventing Executive Order 14160 from taking effect across the country.
The result will be a splintered system in which basic legal identity for those born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents depends on their family’s access to the courts. The stakes here are not theoretical: We are witnessing a test of whether this country will manufacture its first stateless generation from birth.
For my family, this crisis is personal. My two younger brothers were born and raised in Indiana. They grew up in public schools, pledged allegiance every morning, and learned the Constitution like every other kid. Their status as U.S. citizens has never been questioned. But under the logic of Executive Order 14160, the citizenship of children like them could be stalled or denied, simply because of their parents’ circumstances.
Today, I live in Chicago, a city that has proudly defended its sanctuary city status even in the face of targeting by the Trump Administration. But Executive Order 14160 doesn’t respect borders: If allowed to stand, it will apply to hospitals, school districts, and public agencies in every city, denying children the legal recognition they need to begin life fully seen and protected by the rights of citizenship.
Statelessness, which international law defines as the state of being “not considered a national by any country under the operation of its law,” is not a legal technicality—it is a condition of total exclusion that turns daily life into a series of closed doors.
The child born in Indiana, if flagged under this policy, would face myriad obstacles from the very beginning of her life. Her parents could face obstacles enrolling her in public benefits or prove her eligibility for school. She could be denied health coverage under Medicaid or CHIP. She could be rejected from sports leagues, summer camps, or housing programs that require government ID. Her parents—already navigating complex systems as immigrants—may not know how to contest the denials.
These challenges would grow ever more daunting as she reached adulthood. In high school, she wouldn’t qualify for federal student aid. She wouldn’t be able to get a driver’s license or legally work in the United States. If she were to apply for a U.S. passport, it would likely be denied. If she were to attempt to register to vote at eighteen, the system would return an error. If she were to have her own children one day, she might even be unable to legally register their births. She would live in the United States, her home from birth, but remain totally invisible to its institutions. Over time, a clear message takes shape: you are present, but not protected.
Globally, we’ve seen what happens when legal identity is severed from lived reality. In Myanmar, a 1982 law that stripped the Rohingya people of citizenship led to bureaucratic erasure became the foundation for their eventual mass displacement and genocide. In the Dominican Republic, tens of thousands of Dominican-born children of Haitian descent are still unable to access education, health care, or employment nearly a decade after a 2013 court ruling retroactively revoked their citizenship. In Kuwait, the Indigenous Bidun people have lived for generations without recognition as citizens, barred from university and government jobs. And across Gaza, Lebanon, and Jordan, millions of Palestinians live stateless, denied freedom of movement and legal protection.
These are not ancient stories of human oppression. They are active, unresolved humanitarian emergencies. And they all began the same way—with a government quietly deciding who no longer counts.
Drawing on a fringe legal theory, Executive Order 14160 holds that children of undocumented or temporary-status parents are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and therefore not covered under the 14th Amendment, which was ratified after the Civil War to guarantee full citizenship to formerly enslaved people and their children. But this theory was rejected in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), when the Supreme Court ruled that anyone born on U.S. soil—except for the children of diplomats or occupying armies—is entitled to citizenship. This ruling codified an interpretation of the 14th Amendment that has remained a matter of settled law for more than a century since.
Executive Order 14160 does not attempt to overturn that precedent in court, but rather avoids the courts entirely by working through agency discretion by telling federal workers to delay, deny, or ignore citizenship documentation. The impact unfolds in silence: a missing certificate, an unanswered letter, a passport returned with no explanation. The exclusion has its intended consequences before the courts even have the chance to weigh in.
For the time being, nationwide injunctions are temporarily blocking those exclusions. In recent years, nationwide injunctions have paused Trump’s attempted “travel ban,” halted family separation, and protected recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Already in 2025, multiple judges have used these injunctions to block enforcement of Executive Order 14160. But the Supreme Court is now considering whether to strip that power from federal judges altogether.
If the Court rules against nationwide injunctions, the consequences will be immediate. Executive Order 14160 could go into effect everywhere except in the specific states or judicial districts where it has already been blocked. In practice, this would mean a patchwork system: a child born to undocumented parents in California, where litigation or state constitutional protections may result in temporary blocks, might receive full documentation. A child born into a similar family in Florida, where no injunction is in place, might receive nothing.
While states cannot nullify a federal executive order, they can block enforcement within their jurisdictions through various strategies, such as filing lawsuits seeking district-specific injunction, passing legislation to require that state and local agencies issue documentation regardless of federal guidance, and refusing to cooperate with the federal government on document issuance or verification processes.
Still, millions of families, especially those without legal representation, will have no way to contest or delay the policy unless they reside in a state where protections are in place. In effect, access to constitutional rights will hinge on geography and the uneven availability of legal defense, fracturing the meaning of equal citizenship.
Under these circumstances, protection of the Constitution will depend on access to the courts and geography, and equal rights will become unequal in practice.
More than 4.4 million U.S.-born children currently live in households with at least one undocumented parent. Many have never lived anywhere else, and would not qualify for citizenship in their parents’ countries of origin. These children are American in every way that matters. But if Executive Order 14160 moves forward unchecked, they could find themselves excluded from the only nation they have ever known as home.
The legal uncertainty created by the order will not vanish with a new administration—its consequences will span lifetimes. This policy will create a new class of U.S. residents: people born here, raised here, but denied the tools to fully participate, contribute, or thrive.
This is far from the first time the United States has imposed statelessness on its people. Prior to the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Black Americans were denied citizenship by law. After Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws reclassified them as second-class citizens through voting restrictions, segregated schools, and denial of services. Belonging has never been guaranteed; it has always required vigilance and public defense. Executive Order 14160 embodies the same nativist logic, not by race, but by status, and not through violence, but through policy design. It divides children into two groups: those entitled to recognition, and those who must prove they deserve it.
But we are not helpless in the face of this injustice. Congress can prevent this from happening by codifying the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship into federal statute, thus averting future attempts to reinterpret the law through executive orders. What’s more, it is crucial that the judiciary retain its power to issue nationwide injunctions when Constitutional rights are at risk.
State and local governments must also prepare infrastructure to support families who are denied documentation by offering legal aid, identity support, and protections for access to public services. We must sound the alarm—not because this policy could lead to injustice, but because it already has.
But most of all, we must speak clearly about what’s at stake. This is not a legal technicality. It is a fight over whether birth on U.S. soil can still secure a rightful place in American life. It will decide whether a child’s life will be defined by participation, or exclusion.