Maxine Waters suggests Trump should deport Melania at anti-DOGE rally, flubs birthright citizenship meaning
Left-wing Rep.Maxine Waters implied that President Trump should deport his Slovenia-born wife during a fiery — and wildly inaccurate — weekend rant against the administration’s legal battle to eliminate birthright citizenship. Speaking at a protest against the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) cost-cutting effort in Los Angeles Saturday, Waters (D-Calif.), bizarrely brought up first lady Melania Trump’s background. “When he [Trump] talks about birthright, and he’s going to undo the fact that the Constitution allows those who are born here, even if the parents are undocumented, they have a right to stay in America, if he wants to start looking so closely to find those who were born here and their parents were undocumented, maybe he ought to first look at Melania,” Waters said.“We don’t know whether or not her parents were documented.
And maybe we better just take a look.”Melania Trump was born in 1970 in Slovenia, then a part of Yugoslavia.She relocated to New York City on her own in 1996, initially on a travel visa before receiving a H1-B visa that allowed her to legally work as a model.The future first lady became a US citizen in 2006 after marrying Donald Trump and is the first naturalized American to serve in that role.
She is just the second foreign-born first lady in US history — joining England-born and France-raised Louisa Adams, the wife of 6th President John Quincy Adams.Melania Trump later helped sponsor her parents in getting citizenship, which they obtained in 2018.Her mother, Amalija Knavs, died in January 2024.Birthright citizenship refers to the 14th Amendment’s statement that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” — which does not apply to the first lady, since she was not born in the US.Trump and his allies have insisted that the definition of birthright citizenship should ...