Records: States Have No Evidence To Defend Birthright Citizenship

Four states suing the Trump administration to defend the citizenship of illegal aliens and a nonsense definition of “birthright citizenship” do no have any evidence to prove the “harm” they claim in the lawsuit, according to records obtained by America First Legal (AFL).

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which recognizes the only sane understanding of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause: that it does not apply to the entire globe’s worth of people just because they happen to be born on American soil. Put simply, a child born to aliens within the United States does not automatically become a citizen of the United States.

According to the states’ lawsuit, Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon are concerned that if anchor babies’ citizenships are no longer recognized, they will be “harmed” by the loss of “federal funding or reimbursements to programs that the Plaintiff States administer, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), foster care and adoption assistance programs, and programs to facilitate streamlined issuances of SSNs [Social Security Numbers] to eligible babies — among others.”

In other words, they are concerned that they will lose federal funding to give tax dollars meant for American citizens to individuals who should never have been considered citizens in the first place, and who must be returned to their noncitizen status.

AFL filed public records requests with the plaintiff states to see if they had the data or records to prove their own claims. Not one did.

“America First Legal tested whether several plaintiff states challenging the President’s birthright citizenship executive order actually suffered the harm they alleged: that they would have to spend more money on children deemed noncitizens because the federal government would no longer be covering costs,” AFL Vice President Dan Epstein said in a statement. “The evidence either did not exist or was simply not something the states monitored. Suing a presidential Administration without a concrete injury is an abuse of the courts and the justice system. States must do their homework before running to court with allegations lacking evidentiary support.”

When AFL reached out via public records request to prove their claims with actual data, Arizona’s Department of Education replied, saying it “does not compile or aggregate data in a manner that can fulfill your request. We conducted a thorough search of our database and did not find any relevant information.”

Oregon’s Health Authority said, “There are no responsive records to your request for records reflecting ‘all expenditures from January 1, 2022, through August 1, 2025, used to provide services to children born to mothers who lacked a lawful immigration status in the United States or children where both parents lacked a lawful immigration status in the United States.’”

The Department of Human Services in Illinois said, “The Department does not independently track the requested information for the Home Visiting Program, the Early Intervention (EI) Program, or the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP),” adding, “there are no responsive records showing total payouts to undocumented persons . . . for Cash or SNAP benefits . . . [and that] immigration status for the parent is not part of the eligibility determination and is therefore not collected on the application” for the state’s summer electronic benefits transfter program.

Illinois’s Department of Healthcare and Family Services similarly replied that it has no records, and Washington’s Healthcare Authority said it also has no records.

As is the case with many left-wing operations governing health data (see abortion) and government program expenditures, it is entirely possible these states actively decide not to collect this data so that it cannot be used against them as proof of giving American tax dollars to illegals or others who do not deserve them.

“Blue states are claiming one thing in court — that they are harmed by Trump’s executive order — while telling AFL that they either lack responsive evidence or simply do not track that sort of data,” AFL stated. “This is yet another reason why rogue district court judges should not be rubber-stamping leftist lawsuits enjoining President Trump’s constitutional exercise of executive authority.”

The responses from the plaintiff states also suggest that this case should have been immediately thrown out of court for lack of standing to sue because they cannot actually prove any harm has been done — a baseline requirement for any lawsuit.

Despite that, rogue judges at each step of the way allowed the case to not only move forward, but actually placed nationwide injunctions on Trump’s executive order.

One similar case, consolidated with this one, got all the way to the Supreme Court, where the justices finally decided to enter the discussion about the judicial power-grab that is inherent in nationwide injunctions from lower-court judges.

“[F]ederal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote.

The high court’s opinion only took on the issue of preliminary injunctions, which were running rampant across lower courts since Trump took office in January. The merits of the case, however, were sent back to the lower courts.

In September, the Trump administration appealed the case again to the Supreme Court in order to address the merits.

Last week, AFL filed a brief with the Supreme Court on behalf of House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and 17 other members of Congress asking the high court to restore the proper understanding of the 14th Amendment and end the “birthright citizenship” scam that has been run for decades.

“AFL’s brief argues that allegiance is a reciprocal bond requiring loyalty from the individual and consent from the sovereign,” AFL stated. “When that consent is broken, citizenship cannot be claimed. The Fourteenth Amendment enshrines this principle, granting citizenship only to those born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction — meaning total, exclusive allegiance and lawful presence, not mere location.”

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.