President Donald Trump announced he would send more than 5,000 United States troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to deter the migrant caravan from entering the country and, according to multiple reports, said he plans to do away with birthright citizenship.
Michael Sances, a political science professor at the University of Memphis, said the migrant caravan is a recurring migration that travels through Central America and consists of Latin Americans who want to escape the hardships of their home country by entering the U.S. He said the troops Trump deploys to the border will not harm those trying to enter.
“Their stated role is just to keep the peace at the border,” Sances said. “Unless there’s a policy change, and there could be something like an executive order, the process of the border I don’t think anyone expects is actually going to be different for these people entering than it is for anybody else.”
In addition to keeping caravan immigrants out of the U.S., Trump also said in an interview with Axios, an American news website, he plans to sign an executive order that will end birthright citizenship, meaning children born to non-citizens in the U.S. will be precluded from having U.S. citizenship.
Sances said he is confident Trump will not be able to interfere with this right because it contradicts the 14th amendment.
“In the U.S., the 14th amendment to the Constitution says if you are the child of people who came to this country, whether you came here legally or not, if you’re born here, you’re a citizen,” Sances said. “The immediate issue for me as someone who teaches the way government works is that that’s just simply impossible.”
Sances also said he thinks Trump’s mischievousness is mainly just for show. He said Trump is trying to impress his supporters who are upset about immigration.
Otis Sanford, a journalism professor at the U of M and political commentator, said he thinks Trump’s decision to send troops to the border is simply a scare tactic.
“I think it’s just a show of force,” Sanford said. “(Trump) can then show his supporters that, ‘I’m being tough on immigration. I’m securing the border. I’m using military troops to seal the border.’ That’s all this is.”
Sanford also said Trump cannot take away birthright citizenship. He said Trump is a showman putting on a charade to get attention before the upcoming election.
“We’re talking about something that he’s coming up with one week before the election to grab some headlines and rally his base,” Sanford said. “Most politics are about charades, honestly, but the current president has perfected that.”
