The Trump administration yesterday announced a new policy ending automatic U.S. citizenship to some children born to U.S. military members and government employees living abroad.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesperson Meredith Parker elaborated further to Task and Purpose: “The policy change explains that we will not consider children who live abroad with their parents to be residing in the United States even if their parents are U.S. government employees or U.S. service members stationed outside of the United States, and as a result, these children will no longer be considered to have acquired citizenship automatically.” Instead, these children will fall under INA 322, which “considers them to be residing outside the U.S. and requires them to apply for naturalization.”

The Trump administration is trying to downplay this. But, as I tweeted, the confusion, chaos, and fear this has caused – for immigrants and U.S. citizens alike – speaks to how little the nation trusts this administration to act in the interest of all Americans.

Welcome to Thursday edition of Noorani’s Notes.

Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

“PRECARIOUS” – In this job, I am fortunate to meet amazing people. There are few more courageous, more brilliant, or more incredible than Liz Dong, Dreamer and co-founder of Voices of Christian Dreamers. In a deeply personal essay for Christianity Today, Liz reflects on her struggles as an undocumented immigrant, her mother’s sacrifices, and how her faith helped her through the most precarious time in her life: “As a first-generation Chinese immigrant with a precarious immigration status, my future rested on my academic performance. I didn’t have safety nets if I fell short.”

INDEPENDENT COURTS – Facing newly imposed rules by the Justice Department, immigration judges and advocates are calling for a more independent immigration court system, reports Julia Preston at The Marshall Project. “Proposals for Congress to exercise its constitutional powers and create separate, independent immigration courts have long been dismissed as costly pipe dreams. But under Trump, judges and others in the court system say they are facing an unprecedented effort to restrain due process and politicize the courts with the president’s hard line on immigrants and demands for deportations.”

“A SHIELD” – The 14th Amendment, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress to guarantee birthright citizenship, was always meant to unequivocally grant citizenship to anyone born on American soil regardless of their parentage, argues columnist Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe. “Birthright citizenship is a shield against hostile public opinion and raw political power. … The history of the United States is, in part, the history of a steadily widening circle of people legally accepted as full-fledged Americans — from property-owning whites to former slaves to foreign-born migrants from every corner of the globe.”

NEW DATA – Despite fearmongering rhetoric, Texas Department of Public Safety data show that undocumented immigrants in Texas “were 47 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime than native-born Americans and legal immigrants were about 65 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime than native-born Americans,” according to a new report from the CATO Institute. Additionally, the study found that undocumented immigrants “were 29 percent less likely to be convicted of homicide than native-born Americans in Texas in 2017.”

GENERAL FEAR – In a new lawsuit filed against the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, California’s San Francisco and Santa Clara counties revealed “sworn testimonies from public health and social services officials who have witnessed and documented a drop-off in the services they provide because of fear over the rule,” Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News. According to Santa Clara County health officer Sara Cody, “staff in the different county-run programs have reported a ‘general fear’ among immigrants who worry that using any benefits will jeopardize their immigration cases or those of their families.”

BREAKING THE LAW – Government officials, judges, lawyers and immigration advocates are raising concerns that the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, may be in violation of U.S. law. Molly O’Toole in the Los Angeles Times reports that the “alleged legal violations include denying asylum seekers’ rights and knowingly putting them at risk of physical harm — against federal regulations and the Immigration and Nationality Act, the foundation of the U.S. immigration system.” And, in a deeply reported article for The Dallas Morning News, Alfredo Corchado writes that advocates, lawmakers and Central American authorities have characterized MPP as “a flawed policy that means the U.S. is contributing to a rising number of tragedies.”

Thanks for reading,

Ali