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WASHINGTON, D.C. – America First Legal (AFL) has uncovered new records showing that multiple states currently suing the Trump Administration may lack evidence to support their allegations in their lawsuit challenging President Trump’s Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.”
On January 21, 2025, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, and Arizona sued the Administration after President Trump issued an executive order that would end birthright citizenship for children of aliens. In the lawsuit, the states allege that President Trump’s executive order would harm them by having the states lose “federal funding or reimbursements to programs that the Plaintiff States administer, such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), adoption assistance programs, and programs to facilitate streamlined issuances of social security numbers to eligible babies” — programs intended to benefit American citizens, not the children of foreign-born parents.
To uncover whether these claims of injury are true and accurate, AFL filed public records requests with the plaintiff states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon, requesting records of all state expenditures since 2022 as they relate to providing services to children born to mothers, or to two parents, who lack lawful immigration status in the United States.
Arizona, Oregon, Washington, and Illinois responded that, despite their claims in court, they were unable to provide AFL with any evidence to support their allegations of harm.
The Arizona Department of Education replied that it “does not compile or aggregate data in a manner that can fulfill your request. We conducted a thorough search of our database and did not find any relevant information.” The Oregon Health Authority replied, “There are no responsive records to your request for records reflecting ‘all expenditures from January 1, 2022, through August 1, 2025, used to provide services to children born to mothers who lacked a lawful immigration status in the United States or children where both parents lacked a lawful immigration status in the United States.’” The Illinois Department of Human Services replied, “The Department does not independently track the requested information for the Home Visiting Program, the Early Intervention (EI) Program, or the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP).” It also stated that “there are no responsive records showing total payouts to undocumented persons . . . for Cash or SNAP benefits . . . [and that] immigration status for the parent is not part of the eligibility determination and is therefore not collected on the application” for the summer EBT program. The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services also replied that it had “no records responsive to your request.” The Washington Healthcare Authority (HCA) replied, “HCA has identified no records responsive<> to your request.”
AFL previously exposed California’s lack of standing in its own case against the Trump Administration. AFL uncovered California’s lack of evidence supporting its allegations of harm in the state’s lawsuit against the Trump Administration, attempting to overturn President Trump’s Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
These states’ responses to AFL’s records requests raise the concern that their lawsuit challenging President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship may lack an evidentiary foundation.
Blue states are claiming one thing in court — that they are harmed by Trump’s executive order — while telling AFL that they either lack responsive evidence or simply do not track that sort of data. This is yet another reason why rogue district court judges should not be rubber-stamping leftist lawsuits enjoining President Trump’s constitutional exercise of executive authority.
AFL will continue exposing states’ efforts to undermine the America First agenda by filing frivolous legal challenges.
“America First Legal has again exposed that the lawfare against the Administration’s agenda rests on a flawed foundation,” said Dan Epstein, Vice President for America First Legal. “Here, America First Legal tested whether several plaintiff states challenging the President’s birthright citizenship executive order actually suffered the harm they alleged: that they would have to spend more money on children deemed noncitizens because the federal government would no longer be covering costs. And yet, when AFL sought such evidence from Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington, the evidence either did not exist or was simply not something the states monitored. Suing a presidential Administration without a concrete injury is an abuse of the courts and the justice system. States must do their homework before running to court with allegations lacking evidentiary support.”
Read more about the investigation here.
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