Kica Matos: Trump's executive orders "should offend any American who believes in our Constitution and our democracy." Connecticut has joined 17 states in suing President Donald Trump to challenge an executive order to end birthright citizenship — just one of a slate of executive orders signed by the new president that a national immigrant rights activist based in New Haven describes as ​“comprehensive, cruel and shocking in scope.”Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced in a Tuesday press release that the state has joined 17 states, plus Washington D.C. and the City of San Francisco, in a joint lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against Trump and his Monday signing of an executive order to repeal birthright citizenship. That order, the press release states, ​“eviscerat[es] clear constitutional rights to which all children born in the U.S. are entitled.”Birthright citizenship guarantees that children born on U.S. soil are citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status, and is enshrined in the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 and states 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.” The amendment overrode a previous decision ten years earlier in Dred Scott v. Sandford, where the Supreme Court had ruled that African Americans were not U.S. citizens. “This is a war on American families waged by a President with zero respect for our Constitution. We have sued, and I have every confidence we will win. The 14th Amendment says what it means, and it means what it says — if you are born on American soil, you are an American. Period. Full stop,” Tong, who is a citizen by birthright, is quoted as stating. ​“There is no legitimate legal debate on this question. But the fact that Trump is dead wrong will not prevent him from inflicting serious harm right now on American families like my own.“Abolishing birthright citizenship will cause chaos across Connecticut and the United States, with babies born here lacking legal status anywhere, imperiling their future careers, education, healthcare, and more in the only country they will have known.”Due to the order, states will also lose federal funding to programs and be required to modify benefit operations at their own cost. The filing argues that states should not have to bear those costs while their case proceeds because ​“the Order is directly inconsistent with the Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions.”Kica Matos, a locally based national immigration rights advocate who is the president of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), told the Independent that her organization is ​“prepared to use every tool in our arsenal” to fight what she called a ​“blatantly unconstitutional” slate of executive orders. “They are comprehensive, cruel and shocking in scope,” she said of policies that call for mass detention, mass deportation and the usage of the military to enforce immigration laws. Citing more than 100 years of Supreme Court precedent for birthright citizenship, she characterized Trump’s attempt to revoke the policy as an ​“affront to democracy.” “It is so deeply racist and offensive to me,” Matos said. ​“It should offend any American who believes in our Constitution and our democracy.”Among New Haven’s immigrant community, Matos said that she is noticing a ​“climate of fear” as a result of a ​“shocking terror strategy and aggressive enforcement effort” promised by the new presidential administration. She said that she believes the new administration hopes that immigrants will ​“self deport” out of fear. She said that she is proud that Connecticut has joined the multi-state lawsuit and that the state is fighting for justice and the constitution. While some of Trump’s policies are unconstitutional, she said, ​“they are designed to devastate.” “Immigrants should know New Haven will do anything to protect them,” Matos said, reiterating a commitment the city has made to its immigrant community. But at the same time, ​“people need to be careful.”