Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration's immigration policies, strongly criticized the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Trump v.
Barbara, which upheld the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.
In a post on social media, Miller called the ruling "one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the long history of the Supreme Court."
He argued that American citizenship is not a birthright for the world but belongs solely to Americans.
Court's Decision and Reasoning
The Supreme Court's majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, cited the 1857 Dred Scott decision as "odious" for making citizenship a matter of race and blood.
The ruling affirmed that the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause guarantees citizenship to all persons born on U. S.
soil.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the administration and dissenting justices sought to reinstate "blood" as the basis for citizenship, which she said the amendment plainly rejects.
She added that the 14th Amendment's universalist aims should end claims that make bloodline the marker of birthright.
Miller's Immigration Stance
Miller has long advocated for shifting American national identity from a legal concept to one based on genetic inheritance.
He has promoted aggressive deportation strategies and helped draft the "Save Act" to require proof of citizenship for voting.
In an interview with Fox News, Miller questioned why children born in the U. S.
to parents from developing nations should automatically become citizens. He argued that such individuals could eventually serve on juries, implying this was undesirable.
Data shows that immigrants have founded 59% of privately held startups and 66% of AI firms, and make up 50% of PhDs in science and engineering.
Nearly 30% of physicians and 36% of American Nobel laureates in sciences are immigrants.
Historical records indicate that Donald Trump's own ancestors arrived when European immigration faced few restrictions.
His mother, Elizabeth Christ Trump, was a German immigrant not naturalized when she gave birth to his uncle.
His father married a Scottish immigrant, Mary MacLeod, who also was not naturalized at the time of her first child's birth.
Trump's grandfather, Frederick Trump, was a German immigrant who became a U. S.
citizen in 1892 after evading the military draft in Germany.
Two of Trump's wives were immigrants: Ivana, a Czech immigrant who naturalized four years after her last child's birth, and Melania, a Slovenian immigrant who faced scrutiny over modeling work before receiving work permission.
In the first eight months of 2025, ICE apprehended 4,843 spouses of U. S.
citizens, resulting in over 2,000 deportations. During the same period, ICE arrested parents of approximately 14,450 U.
S. -born children, placing over 9,700 parents in detention and deporting more than 7,000.
