In recent days, Yenifer — an asylum-seeker from Venezuela who is seven months pregnant — is finding it nearly impossible to focus on the excitement of her baby girl’s arrival. In between prenatal checkups and organizing everything she needs to care for a newborn, she is constantly checking her phone for updates on an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision that could fundamentally redefine her child’s future.Soon, the high court is expected to rule on Trump v. Barbara, a case challenging the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, which has been in place since 1868 and has long been considered sacrosanct. The order, which lower courts blocked, targets babies born in the United States to parents who are not U.S citizens and don’t hold a permanent immigration status, including visa holders and asylum seekers — people like Yenifer.“I talk about it a lot with ChatGPT,” she says in Spanish. The Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ are not using her full name because she has a pending asylum application and she fears her case could be jeopardized.“[Chat GPT] keeps me calm, it tells me a decision hasn’t been made yet.”Yenifer arrived in Chicago from Venezuela with her partner and 5-year-old son in 2023 after escaping poverty and violence back home. They hoped to build a better life in Chicago. But since the start of Trump’s mass deportation campaign last year, their focus has shifted from planting roots to an exit strategy: work and save enough money to return home within the next few years.Now Yenifer worries she’ll be trapped because her unborn baby-girl could be considered stateless if the supreme court strikes down birthright citizenship.“‘What type of birth certificate will I get in the hospital? What type of documents will I get? Will she be a nobody?’” she wonders.And with the Venezuelan embassy in Washington and its regional consulates inactive, like many Venezuelans across the U.S., Yenifer is afraid she will be stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare, unable to petition for her daughter’s Venezuelan citizenship and eventually secure a passport.Yenifer’s fears are shared by many immigrants. In interviews with WBEZ and the Sun-Times, several expectant mothers — who also asked not to use their full names because of their immigration status — described the same concerns as the country waits for a decision from the supreme court. While many court watchers say the judges seem likely to maintain birthright citizenship, the court has proven itself unpredictable. Until there is a ruling, things remain uncertain for these expectant moms.These mothers worry that without citizenship they won’t be able to take their babies out of the country. They’re afraid they won’t be able to secure the necessary paperwork and identification for their kids. And they fear that without U.S. citizenship, their babies will lack essential support for everything from health care to food.Babies born without citizenshipIf birthright citizenship ends, some babies born in the U.S. could be left without clear citizenship in any country, experts say. “Many asylum seekers are afraid to register their children as citizens of the country they fled from, and where the government has persecuted them, meaning their child would be born stateless,” says Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project. In addition, many countries in turmoil have limited consular services in the U.S.One of the mothers named in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order, Liza, who is Russian, says she and her husband fear persecution if they return or engage with Russian authorities, the lawsuit says. They worry that if their U.S.-born babies were denied American citizenship, they could not safely seek Russian citizenship either.President Trump has said on social media that the U.S. is the only country that allows for automatic birthright citizenship but Pew Research Center has found that while the practice is relatively uncommon, the U.S. is not alone. The process for acquiring citizenship also varies from country to country. In some cases parents must apply and officials have discretion about whether to approve the request or not, according to Pew.No consular servicesAnother mother named in the lawsuit, Trinidad Garcia, is from Venezuela and is due in August. She and her partner have lived in the U.S. since 2017 and have pending asylum applications.Like Yenifer, they worry about being unable to obtain Venezuelan citizenship for their baby.According to the complaint, they believe there is no way to approach the Venezuelan government about their child’s citizenship because there are no Venezuelan consular services in the U.S.For parents worried that their U.S.-born children may not be recognized as citizens, claiming Venezuelan citizenship may seem like the next option. But that process is not simple.Ana Garcia-Gil, founder of the Illinois Venezuelan Alliance, says while there is a diplomatic office in Washington D.C., routine consular services, such as registering their children’s birth and establishing citizenship, remain limited. Venezuelans are “still waiting for the opening of seven consulates that were in the United States at some point.”Venezuela has created an online system, SAIME, and she called that a “good start.” But she says it has not been as fast or complete as Venezuelans expected and the website does not automatically register a U.S.-born child as a Venezuelan. To travel to Venezuela, the child would likely need Venezuelan documents, including a passport, but parents may not have a clear way of getting those without consular offices.“We really feel hopeless at this moment. Things will be, we hope, better, but we don’t know when,” Garcia-Gil says.Experts argued in court filings that an end to birthright citizenship could create “for the first time since slavery ended — a massive population of U.S.-born undocumented children whose caste-like status would be heritable and intergenerational.”Child advocates raised a separate concern. The order could create additional paperwork requirements that would be difficult for many families to meet. They said families facing poverty, language barriers, homelessness or limited access to records could have the hardest time proving their children’s citizenship.The United Nations Refugee Agency has warned that stateless people often struggle to access basic rights and services, including health care, education and the ability to travel.‘I’m in a tougher spot than I was when I left Colombia’Paola, an asylum seeker who is nearly eight months pregnant, lives with her 7-year-old daughter in a spare room at a friend’s apartment in a Chicago suburb.She says she has no money and no clothes for her unborn baby. And no one will hire her because she’s pregnant.She burned through her savings paying for her partner’s bond when he was arrested for not having a driver’s license. Then, he got deported.“Sometimes I’ve had to go out and ask for food outside supermarkets,” Paola says.Paola says while some people are kind, others are judgmental — asking: ‘Where is your husband and why is a pregnant woman begging?’ Paola knows if the supreme court upholds Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship she can go to the Colombian consulate in Chicago to start a process to apply for citizenship for her baby.But she doesn’t even have the money to get there.“I don’t have the energy for anything, anything at all. My situation right now is not easy,” she says.Paola left Colombia to escape poverty and came to the U.S. to try to make a better life for herself and her family.But she says right now ... ‘I’m in a tougher spot than I was when I left Colombia.’Getting a birth certificateWith so much uncertainty around this supreme court decision, many of the expectant moms say one of their biggest worries is that their babies wouldn’t get a birth certificate, leaving them without any kind of identification.For now, the vital records process in Illinois remains in place. After a baby is born, the hospital sends birth information, including the child’s birth date and the parent’s full names, to the Illinois Vital Records System (IVRS), according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.Once the birth is filed, the newborn establishes “legal identity” through birth registration and a certified birth certificate, IDPH says.By federal law, parents can request a social security number while at the hospital after the birth certificate is filed. IVRS sends that request to the Social Security Administration and that agency mails the card to the family.But if Trump’s order takes effect, the process could change, according to Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.He says it’s likely those changes would occur on the federal government’s side, not at local hospitals. But that’s all still “unclear.”IDPH says it has not received federal guidance about changes to Illinois’ current process if the court upholds the order.So what legal status would these babies be given at birth if the Court upholds Trump’s executive order?A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo from last July suggests the federal government could create a process for some U.S.-born children who were denied citizenship to receive a parent’s temporary immigration status. The memo does not say what would happen to children whose parents have no legal status.In the meantime, expectant moms like Paola are waiting to see what happens.“I get overcome by panic — wondering what I’m going to do? I want to go home. I mean, what [Trump] is doing regarding citizenship for children born to immigrants just isn’t right,” she says. “But well, it’s all up to the supreme court.” ...read more read less