President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to issue “a lot” of executive orders, including on immigration, energy and the economy, after he is inaugurated on 20 January.
Gatekeepers News reports that Trump hinted at his plan to seek through executive action that would end birthright citizenship, which entitles anyone born in the US to an American passport, even if their parents were born elsewhere.
Birthright citizenship arises from the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that “all persons born” in the United States “are citizens of the United States”.
“We’re going to have to get it changed,” Trump said. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press in his first broadcast network interview since winning November’s election.
The President-elect also said he would work with Congress to help Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were shielded under an Obama-era programme, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which Trump once attempted to scrap.
“I will work with the Democrats on a plan,” he said, adding that some of these immigrants have found good jobs and started businesses.
Stressing on his campaign pledge to deport undocumented immigrants, including those with family members who are US citizens, he said: “I don’t want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”
While he suggested he would not seek a justice department investigation into Joe Biden and his family, he said that some of his political adversaries, including lawmakers who investigated the Capitol riot, should be jailed.
“I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said. “I’m looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.”
He noted that members of the now-defunct, Democratic-led House of Representatives committee that investigated him “should go to jail”.
Asked whether he would seek to pardon the hundreds of people convicted of involvement in that riot when his supporters stormed Congress three months after his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump said: “We’re going to look at independent cases,” he said. “Yeah, but I’m going to be acting very quickly.” “First day,” he added.
“You know, by the way, they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
