Washington, DC: The Trump administration filed a series of emergency appeals in the US Supreme Court on Thursday (local time), seeking permission to proceed with its plan to end birthright citizenship, CNN reported.
In the appeals, the Trump administration contended that lower courts had gone too far in issuing orders blocking the policy and requested the court to restrict the impact of those orders.
Earlier in January, a federal judge termed his executive order "blatantly unconstitutional" and blocked its implementation. A few days later, a judge in Maryland stressed that Trump's plan "runs counter to our nation's 250-year history of citizenship by birth."
Appeals courts have brushed aside the Trump administration's request to halt lower court orders that imposed nationwide injunctions on an executive order he signed on January 20, the first day of his office.
Courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington have all issued orders blocking its enforcement at the request of more than 20 states, two immigrant rights groups and seven individual plaintiffs, CNN reported.
The Trump administration's appeals to the Supreme Court do not deal directly with the constitutionality of the policy. However, it wants what the administration called a "modest" request to limit the scope of the injunctions. If the Supreme Court gives its nod to the request, it would allow the Trump administration to implement its executive order against people not covered by the pending litigation.
In its emergency appeals filed in the Supreme Court, the US Justice Department said, "Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration."
"Those universal injunctions prohibit a Day 1 Executive Order from being enforced anywhere in the country, as to 'hundreds of thousands' of unspecified individuals who are 'not before the court nor identified by the court'," the US Justice Department said in the emergency appeals.
The Trump administration requested the court to at least allow it to issue guidance explaining how it would enforce the policy.
The administration told the court that the executive branch took an "incorrect position" during the 20th century that the citizenship clauses extended birthright citizenship to almost everyone born in the US, "even children of illegal aliens or temporarily present aliens." It further said, "That policy of near-universal birthright citizenship created strong incentives for illegal immigration," CNN reported.
The Supreme Court will likely issue a briefing schedule that will require those who challenged the Trump administration to respond quickly.
In one of his first acts as the 47th president of the US, Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at ending "birthright citizenship"--the automatic American citizenship granted to anyone born in the country.
Trump's order seeks to change the rules to deny the granting of citizenship to the children of migrants who are either in the US illegally or on temporary visas. It applies to children born on 19 February and onwards and does not apply retroactively.
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