A US Supreme Court case could end birthright citizenship. This NC mom is fighting back.

Her baby is supposed to be a US citizen, according to the 14th Amendment. But Trump is trying to change the rules.

“What would I do to be able to leave the country with my daughter, if I do not have a legal document to be able to leave with her?”

It’s a question Trinidad, an asylum seeker from Venezuela residing in North Carolina, has carried for months—but it’s no longer hypothetical.

On Thursday, the US Supreme Court announced that it will hear arguments on May 15 in cases that could redefine birthright citizenship in the United States. At the center is an executive order from President Donald Trump declaring that children born in the US will no longer automatically be granted citizenship if their mothers are undocumented or present in the country temporarily under tourist, student, or work visas, and if the father is neither a US citizen nor lawful permanent resident.

READ MORE: Trump takes on the US Constitution with day one executive orders

It’s a direct challenge to the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, and for Trinidad, it could shape the future of the child still in her womb.

“I got a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress,” Trinidad said in Spanish, through an interpreter.

She was 11 weeks pregnant when the executive order was signed in January. Since then, she has been preparing for two outcomes: the birth of her second daughter—and the possibility that her child could be born without a country.

“This is the country that we are seeking refuge in after we had to flee political persecution in our home country,” she said. “We feel much safer in this country, and even in this moment right now, it’s still not safe for us to return to Venezuela.”

A case that could reshape the Constitution

Soon after the executive order was issued, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of five pregnant women—including Trinidad. Alongside CASA and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, the case sought to block the order before it could take hold.

On Feb. 5, a federal judge issued a nationwide injunction, a legal order that temporarily blocks a policy from being enforced while the case moves through the courts. When the government challenged that decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from several southeastern states, including North Carolina, upheld the injunction two weeks later.

The legal fight intensified in March, when the Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court to narrow the injunction’s reach—arguing it should apply only to the five named plaintiffs, not to others who might be affected by the policy nationwide. In response, the plaintiffs pushed back, urging the Court to preserve nationwide protections. Their argument was simple: Either birthright citizenship exists for all, or it’s at risk for everyone.

However, the federal government has since doubled down in a March 31 brief.

The brief argued that asylum seekers may not have established “domicile”—a key term under the executive order’s logic—because they may not intend to stay in the country permanently. That possibility could exclude them, and their children, from citizenship entirely.

The fight over precedent

For more than 150 years, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution has served as a foundational promise: that babies born in the US—regardless of their parents’ immigration status—are US citizens. Ratified in 1868, the clause was written to ensure citizenship for formerly enslaved people and their descendants. And in 1898, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that principle, ruling in favor of a child born to Chinese immigrants on US soil. Since then, all babies born in the US, over US waters, or while flying in US airspace have been considered citizens of the United States. Roughly 30 other countries have similar laws.

On April 11, the NAACP filed an amicus brief, a legal document submitted by an outside group offering expertise or perspective, in the Supreme Court case on the matter, State of Washington, et al. v. Donald J. Trump, et. al., warning that the executive order would “create a legally inferior underclass—disproportionately harming communities of color and silencing future generations in our democratic voting process.”

“This executive order is a direct assault on the Constitution and the fundamental rights it guarantees,” said Janette McCarthy Wallace, the NAACP’s chief counsel. “It threatens to resurrect a shameful, exclusionary past.”

That fear is not just about symbolism. If the Supreme Court narrows or rejects the 14th Amendment’s birthright protections, the consequences won’t be confined to legal theory—they’ll be felt in waiting rooms, classrooms, and courtrooms across the country.

A wait with no end

For Trinidad, those consequences are already tangible. She has lived in the US for eight years—working part-time jobs while raising her now 12-year-old daughter, looking forward to delivering her second daughter, and waiting for an asylum decision that has yet to come.

And she is not alone.

In 2023, the US received approximately 945,000 asylum applications, and granted 54,350. The number one country asylum seekers came from that year was Trinidad’s home country, Venezuela, where rampant crime, violence, and the breakdown of law and order have made daily life dangerous for many citizens. Additionally, political repression and human rights abuses have soared under authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro. 

Like Trinidad, many asylum seekers in the US wait years for a decision on their case.

According to the National Immigration Forum, the average wait time for those in immigration court is over four years, and for those in the asylum backlog at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, it can exceed six years. More recent data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data center at Syracuse University, shows that while the overall court backlog has slightly declined to 3.69 million cases, asylum backlogs have surged. More than 1.96 million immigrants are currently waiting for asylum decisions, making the consequences of the executive order especially far-reaching.

To seek asylum is to ask for protection in another country, because returning home would put your life or freedom at risk. Under US law, people can apply for asylum if they have experienced or fear persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.

The stakes of Trump’s executive order are particularly acute for Trinidad and her family.

“It’s very different for us as Venezuelans,” she said, “Because of how uncertain it could be, and the conditions that are particular to us as Venezuelans…We don’t currently have an embassy or a consulate in the United States that could help us if we were to need it.”

Since 2019, the US State Department has suspended all embassy operations in Venezuela. The State Department further warns Americans not to travel there due to civil unrest, wrongful detentions, and the absence of consular services.

Trinidad worries that if the Supreme Court upholds Trump’s executive order and her second child is born without citizenship, there would be no clear path to legal identity or protection anywhere—leaving the child at the risk of being stateless.

Born without a nation

Statelessness doesn’t just mean lacking citizenship—it means growing up without legal recognition, without a passport, and often without access to things like health care, work, or education. 

Miliyon Ethiopis, a co-founder of United Stateless, a national nonprofit led by stateless people that advocates for legal recognition, protections, and a path to citizenship, knows this firsthand. 

Born in Ethiopia and targeted for his Eritrean heritage, Ethiopis spent more than 20 years in legal limbo in the US, working 13-hour days managing gas stations while fighting a deportation order that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only recently agreed to reopen. 

In June 2024, an immigration judge finally granted him asylum.

“Being stateless means no country will claim you as a citizen. We don’t belong anywhere,” Ethiopis wrote in an op-ed in The Fulcrum after his case was resolved. “It took a toll on my health. Every time I had a hearing approaching, I would get sick with anxiety.”

There are an estimated 200,000 stateless people in the US, according to the Center for Migration Studies. 

Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, warned that the number could rise dramatically if birthright citizenship is restricted.

“Many of our members have fled persecution by their government of their country of origin,” she said. “They don’t want that government to know that they even had a child, let alone to have that child’s date of birth and name and all of this identifying information.”

Cruz explained that those circumstances make it dangerous or impossible for many families to pursue documentation through their country of origin—especially if they fled that government.

“If this birthright citizenship executive order were put into place, it would quickly become tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and then potentially millions of people who live in the United States who are stateless.”

A mother’s resolve

Trinidad joined the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project’s lawsuit with the hope that she could help other families like hers.

“As a pregnant woman, I know that there are many people in my same situation, that they’re fearful that their child will not be a US citizen,” she said. “Right now, there’s a lot of fear to give out our personal information or our location.”

As she nears the end of her pregnancy, she said she feels like a participant in a larger movement, while doing her best to keep her stress down—for her baby, and for herself.

“I would hope—and what we’re seeking in this case—is that our babies, that is, the babies of people in my same situation, have the security that they will be citizens of the country they are born in. That they will be able to have an identity. And be able to have a passport.”