“The defence of the right of soil concerns the entire labour movement”

Interview with E. J. Esperanza, a lawyer representing migrant workers in California and a signatory to the appeal by the International Committee Against War and Exploitation

Can you explain how Trump is trying to challenge birthright citizenship?

On April 1, 2026, the highest court in the United States – the Supreme Court – heard arguments challenging President Trump’s executive order to eliminate birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to immigrant parents. If approved by the Supreme Court (the final ruling will be handed down by July), the end to birthright citizenship would deny citizenship rights to more than 200,000 newborns every single year.

Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which says «All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…» Trump is putting forward a theory that children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants are not «subject to the jurisdiction thereof» and thus can be denied citizenship.

Are immigrant workers the only ones affected by this issue?

The issue is a grave one. The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted after the bloodiest war on U.S. soil – the Civil War – and it guaranteed – at least in letter – citizenship to former slaves and their children. Of course, the letter of the Fourteenth Amendment has never been realized: Black Americans continue to struggle for equal citizenship in the United States.

This is an issue that concerns the entire labor movement. The Trump administration wants to create a class of second-class persons by taking away citizenship and rights from the children of immigrant workers. This would create a dual legal labor regime that would super exploit and oppress not only immigrant workers (which is already the practice, as migrant workers do not enjoy the same rights as citizens) but also the super exploitation of their children despite being born in the United States. For generations, this would create a pool of millions of cheap and exploitable laborers at a time of economic crisis in the United States.

To oppose Trump, should we vote for the Democratic Party in the upcoming elections, as some people claimed during the March 28 protests attended by eight million people?

The Democrats’ plea for the midterms is another false promise, as the Democrats themselves have created the modern mass deportation machine that the Trump administration inherited from his Democratic predecessors: President Clinton, Obama, and Biden – all Democrats who are responsible for the largest deportation machine in the world.

We must heed the lessons of the historic immigrant strikes of the spring of 2006, culminating with the historic mobilizations of May 1, 2006, where over 10 million undocumented workers shut down major economies in the United States demanding equal rights. In the end, the movement and the labor unions were co-opted by the Democratic Party which, back in 2006, said the same thing they say today: that things will change if workers vote for them in the midterms. But what happened in 2006? The Democrats won the midterms and then in 2008 the Democrats won the presidency under Obama.

The Democrats are responsible for the largest expulsion machine in the world. Obama and the Democrats carried out a shameful and record number of expulsions, with 3 million immigrant families deported during Obama’s presidency, something which President Biden continued, and which even Trump has been unable to achieve. No immigrant worker – or any worker in general – should trust the false lies of the Democratic Party today – which, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the ruling class.

Interview conducted on 3 April by Nelly Mary

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