Legal advocates celebrated on Tuesday after the Supreme Court upheld the long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment’s right to birthright citizenship.
But for some immigrant parents of U.S.-born children, the anxiety will linger.
This includes Andrew, a 35-year-old father who grew up in South Korea and asked to use a pseudonym to protect his identity. He attended college in the United States, moved back to South Korea and then returned two years ago on a student visa to attend law school. He was accompanied by his wife, who also entered the country with legal status.
She was two months pregnant when President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, barring automatic citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil.
Trump’s order would have affected babies born after February 19, 2025. Andrew’s second daughter was born in August; she is now 10 months old. His first daughter had been born in the United States two years earlier.
On Father’s Day, nine days before the court’s consequential decision, Andrew told The 19th he would be “so happy” if the Supreme Court affirmed his younger daughter’s right to citizenship. But, he said, “it will not be the end of our fear.”
“This political landscape, the political discussion around my child’s right, really creates fear in thinking about something really supposed to be joyful,” Andrew said.
The first year of his younger daughter’s life has been shaped by uncertainty as immigrants around the country witness a historic expansion of arrests and detention, including the detention of whole families and rising numbers of children kept in detention longer than permitted by law. From January 2025 to April 2026, the number of people held in detention by immigration authorities grew 53 percent from 39,238 people to 60,311 people, according to data tracked by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Despite the administration’s public declarations that it would focus on immigrants with violent criminal records, nonviolent immigrants, including those with legal status like Andrew and his wife, have faced increased restrictions and surveillance.
Though the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, another decision allowed the administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is a special designation given to immigrants from certain countries — in this case, Haiti and Syria — who cannot safely return home due to instability caused by natural disasters, civil war or political unrest. Another ruling let the administration revive a restrictive policy allowing officials to turn asylum seekers away at the U.S. border before they can officially apply.
“It’s complicated. We don’t for a second want to diminish people’s real concerns about their safety and their sense of belonging in this country,” said Grace Choi, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that challenged Trump’s executive order. “This administration has just been prolific with its attack on immigrants, and it’s a multifaceted attack. There’s so much happening every day, and we just live in such a time of turmoil and uncertainty.”
When Trump first signed his birthright order, Andrew viewed it as unconstitutional and questioned whether it would stand. But in June 2025, the high court issued a ruling in the case Trump v. CASA that sidestepped the issue of constitutionality and also limited judges’ authority to issue nationwide injunctions, or court orders that can block a policy for people beyond the parties who sued.
This was the moment Andrew and his wife felt the weight of how the court could affect their lives, he said. They considered going back to South Korea to have their baby because they worried that a ruling restricting birthright citizenship could disrupt his wife’s ability to continue receiving insurance coverage during her pregnancy and postpartum period.
“We were getting Medicaid, and we weren’t sure what to expect because it seems like a lot of things that are being controlled by the federal government could change in a second,” Andrew said. “We didn’t have money to pay the bill.”
Ultimately, the family decided it was better to stay.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. CASA forced legal advocates challenging Trump’s birthright order to rethink their strategy. They turned to filing class-action lawsuits to secure broader protections. In June 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, the Legal Defense Fund, the Asian Law Caucus and Democracy Defenders Fund sued on behalf of Andrew and other class members who would be affected by the birthright order.
“I see it as my child’s very basic right under the Constitution,” Andrew said about joining the lawsuit. “I’m studying the law, and I think it’s really important for me to help my child fight for her rights. Not any one president defines who belongs here.”
During the April 1 oral arguments, the Trump administration questioned whether the children of noncitizen or temporary-status immigrants have an allegiance to the country, and whether they can claim a “permanent domicile and residence.”
In response, Cecillia Wang, national legal director for the ACLU, argued that establishing a permanent domicile was not the focus of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.
The weeks leading up to the court’s decision were nerve-wracking, Andrew said. Tuesday’s ruling means that his daughter’s citizenship is protected for now, but Andrew said he wonders if things could change in five or 10 years. He noted that a deep political divide remains, leaving many immigrants in the country on the defensive.
“I cannot imagine my child growing up feeling she’s American, she belongs here, she can contribute a lot to this country, and then, when she’s teenager, people start questioning more,” he said.
Andrew added: “I love the fact that I can try to give my children education here, but I don’t want them to have the feeling of wondering if their rights might be taken away one day.”
