4 highlights from Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing

3.  Blanche calls for ‘congressional statutory adjustment’ in response to birthright citizenship ruling 

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., brought up the U.S. Supreme Court’s Trump v. Barbara decision when questioning Blanche. The 5-4 ruling, issued late last month, determined that Trump’s executive order clarifying that birthright citizenship does not apply to illegal aliens was unconstitutional. 

Blackburn discussed her efforts to combat the phenomenon of “birthright tourism,” which she summarized as “33,000 births a year from people who are circumventing … our laws and coming here simply for the purpose of giving birth.” She identified those seeking to take advantage of the interpretation of the constitutional provision for birthright citizenship as “primarily the Chinese” as well as “Russian oligarchs.” 

After explaining how “My bill would make coming here to give birth inadmissible as a … way to obtain a visa and … immediately deportable as an offense,” Blackburn asked Blanche to “touch on why Congress needs to act and give the administration more tools to enforce this.” 

“The day after the decision came out, the Department of Justice issued a directive to prosecutors to focus on the conduct you’re describing using existing laws and tools that we have, which is mostly around false statements or fraudulent information in the visa application process,” Blanche responded. “We are limited in how we can prosecute folks that are coming here and lying about why they’re coming here, coming just to give birth and also the organizations that are facilitating that.”

Noting that “the Supreme Court opinions relied in part on the statutory part of this,” Blanche maintained that  “any congressional statutory adjustment” would give the DOJ “more tools and would give the president more tools to keep out people who are absolutely not coming for the right reason, only coming to give birth.”