Immigration lawyer weighs in on Trump’s birthright citizenship order, Bay Area faith leaders unite
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) — Faith brought people from different religions together Tuesday in San Jose for a community prayer vigil in support of immigrant families.
Ana is a single mother of two who is undocumented. In 2022 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Facing an uncertain future – you could hear the stress in her voice.
She said she has a lot of fear and a lot of worries that she won’t be able to afford her cancer treatments if she is deported back to Mexico.
Bishop Oscar Cantu with the Catholic Diocese San Jose oversees 53 Catholic churches and says they have a large immigration community.
“I have not seen a decline in attendance. I’ve heard from others in other parts of California they have seen a decline, particularly in the Fresno area,” Bishop Cantu said.
One of President Trump’s first acts in office was issuing executive orders, one of which aims to limit birthright citizenship.
The new order would mean children need at least one parent with U.S. citizenship to be lawful permanent residents.
Hector Quiroga is an immigration lawyer.
“Something like that, it would require a change in the constitution,” Quiroga said.
He thinks Trump’s attempt to block birthright citizenship will not make it far in the courts.
“I really think this is just more of a ‘Hey I’m able to fulfill my promise to the American public, I said I would do this and I tried to do it and I was blocked by the courts or whatever,'” Quiroga said.
The executive order would impact children born on or after February 19th, 2025.
Santa Clara County sent ABC7 this statement:
As the Attorney General’s lawsuit makes clear, the Executive Order claiming to end the over 150-year-old guarantee of birthright citizenship is plainly unconstitutional, and we fully expect that the courts will block it. The County is deeply invested in caring for all children born in its Health System, and this executive order would undermine the security of many parents seeking vital health care. To be clear: the County’s Health System is not doing anything different based on this executive order.
San Mateo County issued this statement to ABC7.
The County of San Mateo remains committed to all babies born in our county and their parents. Our values and our actions have not changed based on the executive order and we want to encourage families not to avoid critical health care out of fear. We are here for them.
Quiroga added one thing he’s recommending to people – start recording.
“One of the things that’s very difficult for us is that typically you have someone who is a foreign national or an undocumented person, or whatever and it tends to be their word against immigration agents and really we just don’t seem have that much validity,” Quiroga said. “But if things are recorded, that’s a whole different thing. We have found lots of violations, lots of skipping the rules, lots of skipping due process.”