If they get rid of birth, right citizenship, do people get grandfathered in or will they have to deport everybody that was born here with undocumented parents?
Executive summary
If birthright citizenship were legally ended going forward, existing people who already hold U.S. citizenship by virtue of birth would not suddenly lose it and be subject to mass deportation; U.S. law and court practice treat citizenship as determined at birth, and most experts, courts and civil‑rights groups have treated recent attempts to strip future or current citizens as unlawful [1] [2] [3]. Any realistic path to changing who is a citizen at birth requires either a constitutional amendment or durable congressional action tested and upheld by the courts, and presidents acting alone lack authority to rewrite the 14th Amendment’s guarantee [4] [5] [1].
1. What the law says now and why existing citizens would not be “deported”
The 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause has long been read to confer citizenship on people born on U.S. soil “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” a guarantee cemented by Supreme Court precedent such as United States v. Wong Kim Ark and affirmed repeatedly by scholars and civil‑rights groups; courts and legal experts therefore treat citizenship as a status fixed at birth, not a conditional privilege that can be stripped retroactively by the president [6] [7] [2]. That is why federal courts blocked an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship and why civil‑rights litigants say no president can “simply erase” the constitutional right [3] [8].
2. The president can’t unilaterally “end” birthright citizenship — and courts have already intervened
Multiple legal authorities and nonprofit legal centers state bluntly that the president lacks unilateral power to change constitutional citizenship rules; federal judges have issued injunctions blocking executive orders that attempted this, and leading legal commentators call such executive efforts unconstitutional and inconsistent with a century of jurisprudence [1] [2] [9]. The BBC and other outlets report that most scholars view a presidential executive order as insufficient to eliminate birthright citizenship, leaving a constitutional amendment as the only clear route to sweeping change [4] [5].
3. What “changing” birthright citizenship would actually look like in practice
If Congress passed a statute that altered federal immigration law’s interpretation of the Citizenship Clause or if a constitutional amendment succeeded, the change would most plausibly apply prospectively — to children born after the effective date of the new law or amendment; the administrative and legal consensus in coverage of recent proposals is that currently recognized natural‑born citizens would remain citizens, while births after enactment would be affected [10] [11]. Sources emphasize, however, that even trying to apply new rules retroactively or to revoke previously recognized citizenship would spark litigation and constitutional challenges [6] [5].
4. Deportation won’t be the sweep described in some rhetoric, but severe consequences would follow for future cohorts
Existing citizens cannot lawfully be deported for the mere fact of having been born in the United States; deportation requires lack of citizenship or removable immigration status, and courts and plaintiffs have treated attempts to render U.S.‑born people stateless or removable as unconstitutional [3] [8]. That said, repealing or narrowing birthright citizenship prospectively would create a new class of U.S.-born noncitizens — an administrative quagmire that experts warn could produce a self‑perpetuating underclass excluded from services and rights and expand, not shrink, unauthorized populations [12] [13].
5. Political reality, litigation risk and the likely outcome
Politically and legally, sweeping change faces high barriers: a constitutional amendment requires supermajorities and state ratification, and statutory or executive attempts invite immediate court challenges and injunctions, as happened in 2025; therefore, the most probable near‑term result of a successful challenge to birthright rules would be prospective modification for future births (if any enactment survived litigation), not wholesale deportation of people already recognized as citizens [4] [9] [11]. Reporting from the White House and congressional proposals shows that proponents articulate narrower statutory definitions (like H.R.4864) but those too would confront constitutional and practical obstacles and would not make current citizens disappear overnight [10] [14].