US Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller has weighed in on the debate over birthright citizenship, calling the constitutional guarantee an “atrocity” as the Supreme Court gets ready to hear the White House’s appeal seeking to limit automatic citizenship.
Miller argued in a post on X that the existing system lets people without legal status in the country secure welfare benefits and political influence through children who acquire citizenship by being born in the United States. “Of all the destructive and ruinous policies aimed at the heart of our Republic, few can compete with ‘birthright citizenship,” he told.
READ: Trump’s birthright citizenship order on hold, but rollout plan moves forward (
He went on to claim that “every illegal alien, foreign visitor and visa scammer, merely by giving birth on US soil, can access unlimited welfare for life through their ‘American’ child and send the extra cash back home to support their foreign village”.
Miller argued that children born to undocumented parents eventually become eligible voters at 18, saying this forms a significant share of the electorate. “Illegal aliens and their descendants are one of the largest voting blocs in the United States”. He also warned of potential security risks, adding, “Under ‘birthright citizenship,’ a terrorist and his terrorist wife can commit immigration fraud, come here as tourists, perpetrate a terrorist attack, give birth, and have an ‘American’ child.”
He further wrote on X, “‘Birthright citizenship’ is an atrocity flatly and flagrantly incompatible with any concept of nationhood.”
READ: Federal judge blocks Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship nationwide (
Miller’s comments come at a moment when the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Trump’s appeal to preserve his January 20 executive order targeting birthright citizenship. The directive seeks to withhold automatic citizenship from children born in the United States if their mother has only temporary legal status or no status at all, and if the father is not a US citizen or a green card holder. Four lower courts have blocked the administration from implementing the order, keeping the policy stalled for now.
Immigration experts caution that limiting birthright citizenship would have serious consequences for families stuck in the long green card backlog, including thousands of Indian professionals on H-1B and H-4 visas. Under the proposed rule, any child born to such parents after February 19, 2025, would no longer qualify for US citizenship and would instead take on the mother’s temporary status. If the mother has no legal status, the child could be deemed unlawfully present from the moment they are born.