Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) backed the Trump administration’s initiative to restrict birthright citizenship, calling it a “magnet” for illegal immigration.
The case centers on President Donald Trump’s January 20 executive order, which would restrict children of illegal immigrants born in the United States from automatically receiving citizenship.
Appearing on Fox News Channel, Cruz joined host Sean Hannity to discuss the broader implications of birthright citizenship and its connection to illegal immigration.
The Texas senator took a firm stance against what he described as a longstanding misapplication of American immigration law.
“That is the absolute heart of the argument, and I think birthright citizenship is terrible policy,” Cruz said during the interview.
He argued that current law provides citizenship to any child born in the U.S., regardless of the legal status of the parents, which he believes is an “incredible magnet” for encouraging people to enter the country unlawfully.
“You see people crossing the southern border, you see pregnant women crossing the southern border explicitly to give birth in America, so their baby can be an American citizen,” he told Hannity.
“We also have this phenomenon called birth tourism, where you have people from foreign countries, people from China, come to the United States when a woman happens to be eight or nine months pregnant and come here to give birth so the baby has American citizenship. That is an abuse of our laws.”
According to Cruz, these practices turn the United States into a target for immigration manipulation, using the birthright citizenship provision to gain legal advantages. He said he has taken legislative steps to address the issue.
“And so, I have long supported ending birthright citizenship. In fact, I filed legislation in the Senate to end birthright citizenship, and that’s what President Trump is trying to do as well,” Cruz added.
Public opinion remains divided on the matter. A survey released Thursday by NPR and Ipsos revealed that 28 percent of U.S. adults favor ending birthright citizenship. A slim majority of 53 percent said they would prefer to keep the current system, while 17 percent said they were unsure.
President Trump has made restricting birthright citizenship a signature part of his immigration agenda. The January executive order is currently facing multiple legal challenges in federal courts.
In a post made on his Truth Social account, President Trump accused Democratic leaders of attempting to sway the Supreme Court’s handling of the issue.
“The Radical Left SleazeBags, which has no cards remaining in its illegal bag of tricks, is, in a very coordinated manner, PLAYING THE REF with regard to the United States Supreme Court. They lost the Election in a landslide, and with it, have totally lost their confidence and reason,” Trump wrote during his trip to the Middle East.
He accused Democrats of being “stone cold CRAZY,” and said that he hopes “Supreme Court doesn’t fall for the games they play. The people are with us in bigger numbers than ever before. They want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
On Friday, Cruz pivoted towards calling out the Biden administration, claiming that he never had a single conversation with former President Joe Biden throughout his four years in office.
During an episode of his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz, the Republican senator pointed out what he described as a deliberate lack of engagement from Biden not only toward himself but also toward most of his Republican colleagues in the Senate.
“So look, in four years of the Biden presidency, I’m in the Senate the whole time. How many times do you think I spoke with Joe Biden while he was president? Zero … not a single time and that is bizarre,” he remarked.
The senator noted that previous administrations, including Democratic ones, made a habit of working across the aisle. He recalled having multiple conversations with former President Barack Obama during his time in office.
“And by the way, when I say I didn’t speak with [Biden] for four years, that was true of virtually every Republican senator,” Cruz continued.
Cruz went on to describe how Republican lawmakers often discussed the President’s absence from direct engagement during their weekly working lunches.
“We would sit at lunch and talk about how weird it was that none of us had spoken to Biden, had been to the White House to see him. And they all knew him, they were clearly hiding him,” he accused.
Cruz’s comments come amid mounting reports suggesting that Biden’s inner circle worked hard to conceal the President’s apparent health issues.
Axios reported Friday that excerpts from the upcoming book Original Sin indicate top aides at the White House took significant steps to shield Biden from both the press and political insiders in Washington, D.C.
According to the report, these efforts were aimed at keeping attention away from what the book describes as Biden’s declining mental and physical sharpness.
Seems to me that what the proponents of ‘birthright’ flatly REFUSE to acknowledge is the context and rationale for the 14th Amendment. IOW it was all about ensuring that freed slaves who were born in the US were finally acknowledged to be ‘natural born Citizens’ and not a free pass to just anyone subsequently born in the Republic. That was especially true of persons who were not here legally, hence that pesky ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ phrase.