On inauguration day, Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at ending automatic citizenship for children born in the United States. While many, including US District Court Judge John Coughenour for the Western District of Washington, have called Trump’s executive order “blatantly unconstitutional,” Trump has continued to fight against courts that have blocked his attempts.
Recently, U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante in New Hampshire had paused his own decision to allow for the Trump administration to appeal, but with no appeal filed his order went into effect. However, the Trump administration has still been increasing restrictions on undocumented and legal immigrants, and natural-born citizens in the U.S.
“Our argument is simple and true — birthright citizenship is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,” Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said in a lawsuit against the Trump Administration. “The president may not care about the Constitution or the rule of law, but we do.”
The Supreme Court on May 19 allowed the Trump Administration to remove protections for nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to stay under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.
Prior to this, the administration had also revoked the legal status afforded to Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion, Afghan citizens who helped the American war effort in their country, and canceled the protected status of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who fled instability and political violence back home. All these groups are now vulnerable to deportation.
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle was founded during a time of crisis. As hundreds of thousands of Central Americans fled their home countries due to civil war and political repression throughout the 1980s, NWIRP was founded as a way to help immigrants legalize their status.
NWIRP receives approximately 1,500 inquiries for services per week and serves more than 10,000 low-income immigrants per year
With the executive order against birthright citizenship, NWIRP’s work has not just been about obtaining legal citizenship, but maintaining and keeping families together.
“This Executive Order presents a fundamental attack on the integrity of our democracy,” said Matt Adams, NWIRP’s Legal Director. “The President does not have the authority to disregard the Constitution and its guarantee of birthright citizenship. The Citizenship Clause was enshrined in the Constitution specifically to ensure that groups of citizens could not be deprived of their place in our society based upon changing political tides.”
NWIRP has responded to the administration’s executive orders with both legal and community-based strategies. Their legal division does impact litigation work for immigration appeals at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and brings attention to immigration-related challenges in the federal district courts. Currently, NWIRP has around 20 active cases they are working on.
The organization has also expanded its educational outreach efforts, including the “Know Your Rights” training sessions for immigrant communities, particularly those most affected by the changing federal policies. These sessions are designed to inform people about their legal rights and the rights of fellow community members, and equip them to respond if approached by immigration enforcement or any other law enforcement agency.
NWIRP also provides resources about The Northwest Detention Center — which was renamed as the Northwest ICE Processing Center in 2019 — an immigration prison located in Tacoma, WA. With a capacity of 1,575, it is one of the largest immigration prisons in the United States.
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project’s Tacoma office serves people in immigration detention at the NWDC through two units: Legal Orientation Program Unit (LOP), and the Detained Immigrant Advocates Unit (DIA). The office helps families contact and visit their family member(s) in the detention center, understand bonds, and go through immigration court.
One case NWIRP supported was a woman named Franselia who grew up in a small town in El Salvador. After trying to come to the United States to seek safety after her boyfriend was murdered by a local gang and they began to threaten her, Franselia was apprehended by immigration enforcement and sent to the Northwest Detention Center. While waiting for her deportation hearing, Franselia met an NWIRP attorney and got direct representation.
After being detained for nearly seven months, Franselia was granted asylum.
Anikka Stanley is the Managing Editor for Arts & Culture at The Daily (University of Washington’s student newspaper) where she oversees editors and writers to publish high‑quality reporting.
Anikka was one of the students in the “Media Responsibility in a Diverse Society” class, taught by Hugo Balta. Balta is the publisher of Washington Latino News.
Cover photo: Maha Khalil and Shir Becker (NWIRP) distribute Know Your Rights information outside the Seattle Immigration Court in June 2025. (Photo courtesy: NWIRP)