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children's rights
We Must Defend the Sacred Promise of Birthright Citizenship
Political opportunism, fearmongering, and xenophobia have conspired to transform birthright citizenship from a cherished right into a polarizing debate.
Jan 30, 2025
A child is born, and with that birth comes a promise that transcends borders, ideologies, and the divisions that too often define our world. In those first moments, a new life is not simply a biological miracle but a profound reminder of our shared humanity. Every child enters this world unmarked by political affiliation, nationality, or social status, bearing only the intrinsic dignity of existence. This truth binds us all—a universal covenant that every life matters, that every life belongs.
In the United States, birthright citizenship has long been the legal and moral embodiment of this sacred principle. Anchored in the 14th Amendment, it guarantees that any child born on U.S. soil is recognized as a citizen, regardless of their parents’ status or origin. It is a cornerstone of American democracy, an egalitarian promise that seeks to reflect the highest ideals of justice and fairness. For generations, this principle has been a beacon of hope for families striving for a better life, a testament to a nation that once boldly declared itself a refuge for the oppressed, the weary, and the hopeful.
To challenge birthright citizenship is to question the very notion that all people are created equal.
Yet, this promise is under siege—not from foreign adversaries, but from within. Political opportunism, fearmongering, and xenophobia have conspired to transform birthright citizenship from a cherished right into a polarizing debate. Opponents decry it as a loophole to be closed, weaponizing a foundational ideal to stoke fear and sow division.
This debate is not just about policy—it is about the soul of a nation. It compels us to confront fundamental questions about who we are and what we stand for: Are we a nation that values the humanity of every child born within our borders? Or are we a country willing to deny basic dignity based on fear, prejudice, and expedience?
The Legacy of Equality
The 14th Amendment, ratified in the ashes of the Civil War, was nothing short of revolutionary. It sought to upend centuries of exclusion and injustice by affirming a profound truth: that citizenship is not a privilege of the few but a birthright for all born within the nation’s borders. It declared that neither the color of one’s skin nor the circumstances of one’s birth could define one’s place in society.
This promise has been a lifeline for countless families, a declaration that opportunity and belonging are not reserved for the privileged few. Yet, detractors of birthright citizenship argue that it incentivizes illegal immigration, reducing children born here to what they call “anchor babies.” This language is not only dehumanizing but also deeply flawed. Studies repeatedly show that birthright citizenship does not drive immigration patterns in the way opponents claim. Instead, such rhetoric weaponizes fear to erode one of America’s most defining principles.
To challenge birthright citizenship is to question the very notion that all people are created equal. It undermines the belief that every child—no matter their heritage, no matter their lineage—deserves the right to belong.
The Danger of Labels
In today’s polarized climate, even the sanctity of birth has become a casualty of political discourse. Children born into challenging circumstances are reduced to labels—“anchor babies,” “crack babies”—as though their lives can be defined or dismissed by a single phrase. These terms strip away humanity and cast children as problems or burdens rather than miracles of infinite potential.
This is a moment of moral clarity, a crossroads where we must decide who we are and what we stand for.
A child born to undocumented parents is not an “anchor” but a human being whose life holds immeasurable promise. A child born into poverty is not a statistic but a testament to resilience and possibility. By allowing such labels to persist, we rob these children of their dignity and blind ourselves to their potential.
Labels do more than dehumanize; they entrench division. They encourage us to see certain children as “other” rather than as fellow members of the human family. In doing so, they erode the shared empathy and moral clarity we need to build a just society.
A Call to Conscience
Birthright citizenship is not merely a legal issue; it is a moral imperative. It is a recognition of the dignity inherent in every life, a reflection of our collective commitment to equality. To dismantle it would not only harm the lives of countless children but also unravel the moral fabric of our democracy.
Around the world, countries like Canada, Brazil, and Mexico affirm birthright citizenship as a testament to their belief in human dignity. The United States, long a leader in championing democratic ideals, must not falter in its commitment. To do so would signal a retreat from the principles that have defined this nation—a betrayal of the promise that every child born here belongs here.
The effort to revoke birthright citizenship is part of a broader campaign to sow fear and exclusion, to pit neighbor against neighbor. But we must resist. We must rise above the politics of division and reaffirm the sacredness of every life.
A Future Worth Defending
Frederick Douglass once wrote, “It is not the mere getting of freedom that makes the man, but his becoming a citizen of the United States.” Citizenship is not just a legal status; it is a profound acknowledgment of belonging. It says, “You matter. You are one of us.”
Today, we are called to defend this principle against forces that seek to diminish it. We must affirm that every child born in this nation is not just a number or a talking point but a miracle—an embodiment of hope, potential, and shared destiny.
This is a moment of moral clarity, a crossroads where we must decide who we are and what we stand for. Let us choose justice over fear, unity over division, and love over hate. Let us protect the promise of birthright citizenship—not as a relic of the past but as a foundation for a more compassionate and inclusive future.
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The Laken Riley Act Harms Immigrant Children, And It’s Only the Beginning
Policymakers on both sides of the political aisle seem all too eager to support legislation that ignores that immigrant children are human beings, worthy of the same care and protections that their own children enjoy.
Jan 29, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump is about to sign legislation so sweeping and reckless that it could force a kindergartener merely charged with stealing a lollipop into indefinite detention at a federal immigration facility.
With bipartisan support, lawmakers have pushed through the Laken Riley Act, which expands the categories of offenses that require mandatory federal immigration detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to include minor theft-related crimes, such as shoplifting—without exempting children. This bill doesn’t even require a child to be charged or convicted of a crime before being indefinitely imprisoned.
It has no minimum age limit, so anyone old enough to commit shoplifting or other property crimes would be treated the same as adults under this bill. Twenty-four states have no minimum age for prosecuting children, meaning that, in certain states, even a five-year-old could be imprisoned under this extreme legislation.
It’s not too late for Congress to do the right thing and introduce new legislation to protect children from this draconian law. A course correction is urgently needed.
Congress quickly pushed through this far-reaching legislation and bypassed the traditional process which requires thoughtful discussion and debate. Sixty-four senators and 263 representatives voted for this short-sighted act, and untold children across the country will suffer because of it. Did those who voted for it realize that the Laken Riley Act is so extreme it applies to children, without exception; will lead to thousands of children being detained; raises profound due process questions; and will separate thousands of parents from their children?
For 30 years, we at the National Center for Youth Law have served as co-counsel on the landmark Flores case, which establishes minimum protections for children detained in federal immigration custody. We’ve interviewed hundreds of children in federal immigration facilities, and we have seen detention—even brief detention—cause significant mental and physical harm. Under the Laken Riley Act, children could be held indefinitely—for months or even years—in juvenile detention facilities that have historically been the site of abuse and neglect.
It’s not too late for Congress to do the right thing and introduce new legislation to protect children from this draconian law. A course correction is urgently needed.
But the Laken Riley Act is just the beginning. Immigrant children and youth are already under direct attack by an onslaught of executive orders and government actions that threaten their safety, health, and future.
Recent executive orders purport to end constitutionally-protected birthright citizenship, close the border to children and families seeking asylum, and indefinitely suspend all refugee admissions—including refugee children. Immigration enforcement policies that have been in place since 2011 have been eliminated, undermining the safety of children and families attending school, seeking medical care, and praying in churches. Coordinated raids are already tearing families apart and striking fear in immigrant communities. There are even promises to reopen family detention centers and end longstanding protections for detained children.
Policymakers on both sides of the political aisle seem all too eager to support legislation that ignores that immigrant children are human beings, worthy of the same care and protections that their own children enjoy. It is deeply disheartening to see lawmakers shift with the political winds rather than hold true to fundamental values.
Congress must not acquiesce to a country in which the rejection of children’s rights is the norm. Although the political voices for the humane treatment of immigrant children have fallen largely silent, a handful of steadfast champions remain. We applaud the congressmembers that continue to stand up for these children’s rights. We are hopeful that their colleagues will regain their moral compass to guide them as we navigate continuous assaults on children in the months and years ahead.
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The ‘Kids for Cash’ Scandal Is About Much More Than Biden's Ignominious Pardon
It’s about the system itself: structured on the value and, indeed, the necessity, of punishment, of “war” on all that is evil, from a kid stealing a candy bar to terrorists attacking America.
Dec 21, 2024
More than 15 years after the “kids for cash” scandal shocked the nation, it’s back, stirring not just public incredulity but, for some, soul-slicing memories of hell on Earth.
This is thanks to U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to Michel Conahan, one of two juvenile-court judges in Luzerne County. Pennsylvania, convicted of accepting cash from private detention centers—as much as $2.8 million over a period of about six years—in exchange for sending them children (my God, as young as eight years-old) convicted of petty offenses, such as fighting, shoplifting, underage drinking, to serve prolonged sentences in prison.
Conahan, along with Mark Ciavarella, had collected cash for sending more than 2,300 children to prison. Many of them were scarred for life by this experience. Some committed suicide.
This is the us-vs.-them mentality, a quick-grab governing concept that has given us both the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex: two looming cash cows that define far too much of who we are as a nation.
“My son did nothing more than anything that most of us as kids did, you know, experimenting and living his life and making mistakes, that we usually all get to just learn and evolve and grow from. He did nothing more than be at an underaged drinking party with tons of other kids, but he was caught.”
This is Sandy Fonzo, speaking recently with Amy Goodman in a highly emotional interview on Democracy Now!, in the wake of the news of Conahan’s clemency. Her son, a senior in high school, a star wrestler, spent a month in the juvenile detention center just as his senior year was beginning. He came out lost, emotionally shattered, wound up getting into a fight and had to stand before Judge Ciavarella again. This time he was walloped with an eight-month sentence.
“He lost his senior year.” Sandy said. “He never had the chance to wrestle again, any chance that he had for a scholarship. He came out of there very bitter, very angry, pent up with anger. He couldn’t look you in the eye. I don’t know what happened in that facility. My son was a very big, strong, proud boy, and he came out broken.”
“ ...It changed him. It broke him. It stole his youth, his childhood. He would never, ever recover. And it just became too much, and he shot himself in the heart.”
Kids for cash! Her son wound up killing himself—and that’s just one story out of, presumably, thousands. A kid does a “bad” thing and, whoops, off to prison with you! At the time, I wrote in a column:
Many of these kids had never been in trouble before, and many of the offenses that netted jail time were trivial in the extreme. Sixteen-year-old Hillary T., for instance, who lampooned her assistant principal on MySpace, was given a three-month sentence. (With a lawyer’s help, she got out after one.) Kurt K. was in the company of someone who was caught shoplifting at Wal-Mart; accused of being a “lookout,” he wound up doing almost a year of jail time. Jamie Q. exchanged slaps with a friend during an argument; she also was sent away for almost a year. She was 14.
While the judicial corruption of “kids for cash” is glaring, that’s hardly the entirety of the issue. As I read and remember the details, I see something far larger quietly looming in the background, behind the judges’ criminality—behind what I called at the time “the blurring of the line between profit and state.” It’s the system itself: structured on the value and, indeed, the necessity, of punishment, of “war” on all that is evil, from a kid stealing a candy bar to terrorists attacking America.
Here’s how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put it the other day, addressing his congressional colleagues as they were considering the passage of 2025’s National Defense Authorization, which allots $895 billion—two-thirds of the federal budget, for defense spending.
“When we talk about increasing Social Security benefits,” Sanders said, “well, ‘we just can’t afford to do that. We just can’t afford to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, or vision. We just cannot afford to make higher education in America affordable.’ That’s what I hear every single day. When there’s an effort to improve life for the working class of this country, I hear, ‘No, no, no, we can’t afford it.’ But when it comes to the military-industrial complex and their needs, what we hear is ‘yes, yes, yes’ with almost no debate.”
Understanding and transcending our troubles, our conflicts, is complex—way too complex, apparently, for so many of those in power to have the patience to try to comprehend, especially when they also have the far simpler option available of simply eliminating those troubles (no matter that it never works).
In a justice system immersed in such complexity—focused on understanding a lawbreaker rather than simply, and coldly, enforcing rules—corruption of various sorts would no doubt still be possible, but not at the simplistic, easily justified level of “kids for cash.”
This is the us-vs.-them mentality, a quick-grab governing concept that has given us both the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex: two looming cash cows that define far too much of who we are as a nation. As the National Priorities Project noted in a 2023 report:
In (fiscal year) 2023, out of a $1.8 trillion federal discretionary budget, $1.1 trillion—or 62%—was for militarized programs. That includes war and weapons, law enforcement and mass incarceration, and detention and deportation.
I can only hope that the reawakened “kids for cash” outrage shines a light on more than just two convicted judges, one of whom received clemency after a dozen years of imprisonment. I certainly can understand the anguish and anger this could cause for anyone—parent or child—wounded by their corrupt actions. But maybe it’s also time for a collective reassessment of our criminal-“justice” system as a whole and, indeed, our moral certainty that punishment and war keep us safe.
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