The US United Methodist Church has offered a legal advice webinar for its members, amid President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented citizens.
Attended by over 1,000 people, the session was designed to help both churches and congregation members stay informed. The United Methodist Church says it is “guided by multiple Bible passages, including Jesus’ call to welcome the stranger”.
The webinar highlighted data from the Cato Institute, which indicates that 71 per cent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and 67 per cent of ICE detentions were of people who had no criminal record. ICE is now the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency.
A key issue prompting the Church’s webinar was the status of birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship is afforded to people born in the US to immigrant parents, under the Fourteenth Amendment: “All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
However, in January, a White House order attempted to deny this, claiming that someone was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US if their mother was unlawfully present in the United States at the time of said person’s birth.
The Supreme Court ruling in Trump v CASA Inc on 27th June opted “not to take up the merits of Trump’s order,” but to “limit the scope of lower-court judges’ injunctions against Trump’s actions”.
On 16th July, a federal judge in Maryland ruled against Trump’s order. Senior Counsel William Powell, who represented parents in the Maryland case and is also a United Methodist Church member, told the Church’s webinar: “If you’re pregnant… and your baby is born in the United States, they will be a citizen by birth”