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migrant rights
Trump’s Attacks on Citizenship Reveal a Deeper Problem with ‘Citizenship’ Itself
We must reimagine a world where freedom and equality are guaranteed to all, no matter their status.
Aug 14, 2025
There are two main paths to citizenship in the United States: birthright, which is guaranteed to those born on US soil or to citizen parents, and naturalization, a process applied for after immigrating.
The Trump administration is attempting to upend these long-held and widely accepted rules, arguing for an end to birthright citizenship, which is constitutionally protected, while attacking the naturalization status of populations across the country.
These attacks on citizenship come amid a substantial investment in immigration crackdowns. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” allocates an unprecedented $178 billion toward immigration enforcement, a figure higher than the military budgets of entire nations and a price tag 13 times greater than Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) already booming budget.
And we know exactly what this expansion will be used for.
America’s immigration system must honor human rights for everyone, especially those at the margins.
In just the first few months of the Trump administration, ICE agents donning masks and unmarked clothing have surveilled, interrogated, and kidnapped individuals off the streets en masse. Arbitrary arrest quotas fill overcrowded, inhumane, and unsanitary detention centers. And despite claims that only “criminals” are being targeted, people of all backgrounds—including students, politicians, children, and U.S.-born citizens—are being arrested and abused, stripped of their dignity and humanity.
Trump is undoubtedly culpable for these abuses. But he did not invent the playbook. He simply adapted the rules long built into this country’s citizenship policies—both the implicit and explicit ones.
US citizenship has always been negotiated between those the state deemed worthy and unworthy. Race and gender have long restricted individuals from obtaining citizenship and the privileges granted with it. The 14th Amendment, the guarantor of jus soli, transformed the status and rights of all those to come—myself included. I would not be a US citizen without this code.
But documents and formalities cannot erase the existence of an informal, second-class citizenry that continues to pervade American society.
Native Americans, Indigenous peoples native to these lands, were denied this framework of legality and excluded from guaranteed citizenship for generations. Systems of oppression, domination, and exclusion allowed white bodies to be favored over Black and brown ones—even when they held and waved that landmark document, demanding their civil liberties be guaranteed and protected. Those born in U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and Guam continue to lack meaningful electoral rights and, in American Samoa’s case, even citizenship itself.
An examination of the difficult and lengthy naturalization process reveals further discrepancies. Volume 12 Part F states that individuals must possess “good moral character” to become naturalized, a measure that is both vague and arbitrary. Any conduct or act that deviates from a community’s moral standard is grounds for both denial of citizenship and denaturalization if citizenship is already obtained.
But how is morality defined? Immoral behavior is outlined by the state—murder, aggravated felonies, genocide, and torture are some examples listed. But aggravated felonies also include failing to appear in court. So when we see ICE arresting immigrants at court hearings and scaring others from appearing out of fear of arrest, suddenly the intent behind these actions becomes clear.
In this system, any action or inaction becomes punishable—including the “crime” of being an immigrant. Notably, this “moral character” clause has existed since the Naturalization Act of 1790—a reminder that these pursuits are not a recent political development but built into our founding documents.
Now, the Justice Department is expanding its criteria for denaturalization, using the definitions established by Congress centuries ago. A recent Justice Department memo orders those accused of involvement with terrorist, gang, or cartel groups to be targeted for deportation or even stripped of their citizenship, an indicator of their “immoral character.”
But the administration’s definition of “terrorism” and “criminal involvement” is both flawed and targeted. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, accused of being a member of MS-13, an international criminal gang, was wrongfully deported and imprisoned in El Salvador without due process—a move that was actually illegal, given that a court order barred his deportation to El Salvador on account of the gang threats and violence he faced there.
In another example, Rümeysa Öztürk, a PhD student at Tufts, cowrote an op-ed criticizing the university’s response to resolutions passed by its student body about Israel’s violations of international law. She was subsequently kidnapped and detained in an ICE prison for months.
These are simply two instances of a series of repeated offenses committed by the US government. In an effort to apprehend and throw out immigrants en masse, the state criminalizes individuals for free speech and seeking asylum.
Elsewhere, the right to vote is denied to citizens the US deems unworthy of representation. Essential rights and civil liberties are being stripped from legal residents, mitigating access to the freedoms that have defined America for centuries. More and more individuals are sorted into different tiers of citizenship, soon leaving few with the guarantee of liberty and justice promised to all.
For all its extremism and cruelty, the Trump administration is simply using the tools already available to them. Citizenship requirements contain too many loopholes that are easily exploited. So for progressives, opposing restrictive immigration policies is not enough. We must move beyond an idea of “citizenship” that only guarantees rights according to an individual’s status and reimagine a world that respects the freedom and equality of all people no matter their status.
If “morality” is a requirement for entry, then anything can be redefined as “immoral.” Economic metrics of inclusion fail for the same reason. Nations should not prioritize people solely based on what they can provide to employers. The argument that “immigrants help our economy” only emphasizes the need for individuals with economic value.
America’s immigration system must honor human rights for everyone, especially those at the margins. Those seeking asylum, refuge, education, or simply a better life should not be denied access to civil liberties and fundamental freedoms.
Aren’t these the true American values?
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On World Refugee Day, Human Rights Defenders Slam Trump's 'Inhumane and Cruel' Decrees
"When we protect refugees, we protect our values and the belief that everyone deserves a chance to live free and safe," said congresswoman and refugee Ilhan Omar.
Jun 20, 2025
Amid President Donald Trump's barrage of executive orders banning refugee entry into the United States and ending protected status for immigrants from some of the world's most unsafe and destabilized countries, Amnesty International led human rights defenders Friday in a World Refugee Day plea to the U.S. administration and other governments to "protect, not punish" people seeking refuge from violence, repression, and impoverishment.
Trump's dizzying attacks on refugees and other immigrants started at the beginning of his first term and continued apace upon his return to the White House. The Republican president signed decrees declaring an "invasion" of "aliens" and ordering the border sealed; barred asylum claims on U.S. soil, ramped up migrant detention in a boon to the private prison industry, and deputized state and local police for purposes of immigration enforcement.
The president has also deployed the military to the border, expanded expedited removal, rolled back temporary protected status (TPS) programs, suspended nearly all refugee resettlement, revived the "remain in Mexico" migration management policy, halted international humanitarian aid programs, and moved to end constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship.
Refugees and asylum-seekers from countries including Afghanistan, Cameroon, Cuba Haiti, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have been stripped of TPS, a move with life-and-death implications for many people, including Afghans who risked their lives to aid the U.S. invasion and occupation of a country now ruled by the Taliban they opposed. Refugees fleeing Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine are also in limbo following the Trump administration's suspension of a temporary humanitarian program.
Meanwhile, Trump has admitted a number of white South Africans as refugees, citing bogus claims of "white genocide" amplified by white nationalist figures including multibillionaire Elon Musk and senior adviser Stephen Miller. Some of these Afrikaners now say they have been left stranded without adequate support from the government that ostensibly welcomed them into the United States.
"At the same time, the United States has escalated mass immigration raids, is detaining and separating families, is unlawfully removing individuals from the U.S. with no due process guarantees, and is criminally prosecuting individuals for the way in which they entered the country—treating people in need of international protection as criminals," Amnesty International said Friday.
According to Amnesty:
These harmful policies have rippled across the region. Costa Rica and Panama have accepted deportation flights of third-country nationals from the United States—many with ongoing asylum claims—leaving them stranded with limited access to humanitarian assistance and international protection. El Salvador is complicit in the enforced disappearance of hundreds of Venezuelans illegally expelled from the U.S. under the guise of the Alien Enemies Act in the notorious [Terrorism Confinement Center] prison, who were in the midst of ongoing court processes, were arrested while complying with their immigration obligations, were already granted protections in the United States including under the Convention Against Torture, and were labeled as gang members for their tattoos or connection to the Venezuelan state of Aragua with no other evidence.
"On World Refugee Day, we are witnessing a devastating erosion of the rights of people seeking safety and asylum protections across the Americas," Amnesty International Americas director Ana Piquer said in a statement Friday.
World Refugee Day rally with diverse faith communities denouncing the Trump administration shutting the door to refugees.
[image or embed]
— Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons (@guthriegf.bsky.social) June 20, 2025 at 8:56 AM
"The Trump administration has issued a barrage of executive actions which have halted the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and make it nearly impossible to seek asylum in the United States, placing countless lives at risk," Piquer added. "These policies have already resulted in thousands of people being forcibly returned to places where their lives or safety are at risk. Currently, there is no longer any way for people to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. This is not only unlawful but inhumane and cruel."
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a refugee from Somalia, marked World Refugee Day in a social media post saying, "As the Trump administration attacks refugees, turning their pain into political stunts, closing doors when we should be opening them, we have a responsibility to stand with refugees no matter where they come from."
"When we protect refugees, we protect our values and the belief that everyone deserves a chance to live free and safe," Omar added.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) posted Friday on Bluesky: "This World Refugee Day, I'm thinking of the millions of people displaced by persecution and violence. I condemn the Trump [administration's] decision to halt refugee resettlement—slamming the door on thousands of people who have been properly vetted and approved to come to the U.S."
Amnesty noted that "the situation is further exacerbated by the U.S. government's severe cuts to foreign assistance, which have weakened shelters and frontline organizations that provide lifesaving support to people seeking safety and internally displaced people."
"From Costa Rica to Mexico to the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, organizations have been forced to scale back or close food, shelter, and legal and psychosocial programs for people seeking safety, just as need grows," the group continued.
"On World Refugee Day, Amnesty International urgently calls on states in the Americas to protect, not punish, people seeking safety," Amnesty added. "States must immediately restore access to asylum, reverse discriminatory policies, and uphold their obligations under international law. We stand in solidarity with people across the region who have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety and dignity. Seeking safety is a human right. It's time for governments to act like it."
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How Will We Respond to Immoral Laws Targeting Refugees Today?
The Republican Party now seeks to criminalize every aspect of helping a person who has fled a life of torture, violence, and suffering. Will we obey?
May 25, 2025
A person escapes slave labor, torture, rape, and murder, and illegally crosses a border to a land where such crimes are outlawed, to a land where people have the right to work for wages and are protected by the law. Anyone in this “Free Land” who harbors or aides such an escapee is subject to federal prosecution, fines, and imprisonment. Yet to turn them over to federal authorities returns these people to a life of wanton violence and suffering.
This was the United States in 1850 when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, legislation requiring that all escaped slaves be returned to the slave owner and that officials and citizens in free states must cooperate. Aiding or harboring a slave meant prison and steep fines. Habeas corpus was suspended under this law. Citizens were required to return a runaway slave to the chains of bondage or face the wrath of the federal courts.
Americans in 1850 had to decide where they stood, with the newly passed federal law or with their conscience. The risk was great, for both the runaway slaves and those Americans who might help them.
Our choice on such a momentous issue determines not just our place on the right or wrong side of history but determines the fate of people impacted by our decision.
Today, the Republican Party, the very party which grew from the outrage over the wickedness of the Fugitive Slave Act, now seeks to criminalize every aspect of helping a person who has fled a life of torture, violence, and suffering. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 has been updated and amended for the fleeing refugees of 2025.
On April 25, 2025, U.S. officials arrested Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge, and charged her with helping a man in her court evade immigration authorities. It is alleged she hindered immigration agents who appeared in the courthouse to arrest the man without a judicial warrant. She faces numerous federal charges.
We are only four months into Trump’s Second Term of Cruelty. Where will we be a year from now? Two years from now? How draconian will the laws be then?
Americans living in the border states of the 1850s were called upon to answer the question of what they would do when a runaway slave appeared in their community. Would they violate federal law and help, or would they turn the desperate families back over to the slaveholders, to the “manstealers,” as the bounty hunters were then called.
Many in the border state of Pennsylvania—Quakers, Amish, Brethren—followed their faith and funneled these runaways to freedom. In Lancaster County, Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens allegedly hid slaves in a cistern in his backyard as he facilitated their road to freedom. He was an oathbound member of Congress violating U.S. law to save lives.
In retrospect, it is easy to know what the right thing to do was in the case of slavery and The Underground Railroad. That issue today is clear for us. We know where we would stand: for freedom, for those fleeing slavery. But back then the issue was not so clear. Our choice on such a momentous issue determines not just our place on the right or wrong side of history but determines the fate of people impacted by our decision.
Will we help or hinder a person in need?
Will we violate immoral law to save a life?
Will we risk fines and imprisonment?
These questions were asked and answered by many Americans in 1850. How will we answer them today?
So often we wish to be part of a moment of great historical importance, a moment when we have to take a risk to save another, to take a stand when others wouldn’t. We feel certain we would know the right thing to do. If only such a moment would come our way.
Today, that moment comes not in the form of storming a beachhead or taking a hill in battle. It is not marching for civil rights in Birmingham or Selma. And it is not hiding a runaway slave in your attic, though the similarities to that particular act of conscience are striking. Today it is whether to provide shelter and safety to a refugee fleeing violence in their home country, a person illegally in the United States.
How will we respond this time? In this century? In this historic moment?
Is a refugee illegally entering this country to flee institutional violence different than a slave illegally entering a free state to escape slavery? Especially when that institutional violence has been precipitated by the U.S. repeatedly intervening and destabilizing the home country of the refugee?
In 1958, legendary peace activist Philip Berrigan asked a youth retreat group the following question: “What's it going to be with you? Are you going to go through life playing both ends against the middle, playing cozy, not committing yourself, sitting on the fence?”
That question is as potent, and as dangerous, today as it was then. For us, and for the victims in the breach.
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