The horrific consequences as described in this post, would not happen if proper legal immigration policies were followed.

 

Child of Chinese illegal immigrants charged with planting explosive at US military base

By Peter Pinedo Fox News April 4, 2026

Officials announce indictments in alleged IED plot at MacDill Air Force Base

DHS asserted the case 'illustrates why the improper recognition of "birthright citizenship" for children of illegal aliens ... endangers all Americans'.

Officials on Wednesday announced indictments against Alen Zheng and his sister, Ann Mary Zheng, in an alleged IED plot at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. (WTVT)

The Department of Homeland Security revealed that a suspect who fled to China after allegedly planting a deadly explosive device at a military base is the child of two Chinese illegal immigrants.  

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Chinese nationals Qiu Qin Zou and Jia Zhang Zheng, both of whom were living in the U.S. illegally, Homeland Security said. 

They were arrested after two of their adult children, Ann Mary Zheng and Alen Zheng, were connected to a failed plot to detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida in mid-March. 

The base is home to U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, and Special Operations Command, which oversees all special operations forces across the Department of War.

ICE DETAINS PRESIDENT OF WISCONSIN'S LARGEST MOSQUE, ALLEGING HE HID CONVICTION FOR ATTACKS ON ISRAELIS

The alleged perpetrators of the attempt were born in the U.S. after their parents illegally entered the country, according to the Department of Homeland Security. 

The agency asserted the case "illustrates why the improper recognition of ‘birthright citizenship’ for children of illegal aliens is not only inconsistent with the Constitution, but endangers all Americans."

 

Jia Zhang Zheng (left) and Qiu Qin Zou (right) are Chinese illegal aliens whose adult children were allegedly behind an attempted bombing at MacDill Air Force Base. (Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty Images; DHS)

Birthright citizenship refers to the principle that anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically granted U.S. citizenship. 

The FBI said Alen Zheng, who is believed to have planted the improvised explosive device at MacDill Air Force Base March 10, is currently in China. He is facing charges of attempted damage to government property by fire or explosion, unlawful making of a destructive device and possession of an unregistered destructive device, which carry a potential sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

FBI Tampa arrested Ann Mary Zheng March 17 after her return to the U.S. from China, where she had fled with her brother. She was charged as an accessory after the fact and tampering with evidence, facing up to 30 years in prison. 

She is accused of hiding or damaging a 2010 Mercedes-Benz to prevent its use in legal proceedings, court documents show.

 

Ann Mary Zheng was charged as an accessory after the fact and tampering with evidence, facing up to 30 years in prison.  (DHS)

Prosecutors allege the siblings attempted to cover their tracks by selling the vehicle to car dealer CarMax. Despite the vehicle being vacuumed and cleaned, investigators later discovered trace explosive residue inside the vehicle.

The day after Ann Mary Zheng’s arrest, ICE apprehended both parents, Qiu Qin Zou and Jia Zhang Zheng. They are in ICE custody, according to the Department of Homeland Security. 

Both parents applied for asylum in the U.S. but were denied and ordered removed by an immigration judge in 1998, according to the agency. 

The Department of Homeland Security said the Bureau of Immigration Appeals denied multiple attempts by the parents to have their case reopened. Despite this, both remained living in the U.S. illegally for nearly three decades.

The department said the case highlights the "grave danger" of current U.S. law granting automatic citizenship to anyone born on American soil, including the children of illegal immigrants.

 

"It is time to reclaim both the Constitution and our common identity".

 

Reclaiming our own birthright: We might need to amend the Constitution

by Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor - 04/04/26 thehill.com

 “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

Those words from Chief Justice John Roberts during this week’s oral arguments signaled that the conservative justices are unlikely to reject birthright citizenship. Of course, nothing is certain until this summer when the Court issues its opinion in Trump v. Barbara. However, we need to consider the need for a 28th Amendment to reaffirm the meaning of citizenship. 

 As some of us stressed before the oral argument, the odds were against the administration prevailing in the case, given more than a century of countervailing precedent. There are good-faith arguments against reading the 14th Amendment as supporting citizenship for any child born in this country. It is doubtful that the drafters of the 14th Amendment could have envisioned millions of births to illegal aliens. They surely did not imagine foreigners coming to this country for the purpose of giving birth — or even, without ever entering the U.S., contracting multiple U.S. residents to carry babies to term for them as surrogates.

The historical record is highly conflicted. Some drafters expressly denied that they intended for birthright citizenship to be covered by the 14th Amendment. 

The rampant abuse in this country and the widespread rejection of birthright citizenship by other countries (including some that once followed it) did not seem to impress the conservative justices. Roberts’s statement was in response to Solicitor General John Sauer’s argument that “We’re in a new world now … where eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S. citizen.”

Although President Trump has lashed out with personal attacks on the conservative justices as “disloyal” and “stupid,” they are doing what they are bound by oath to do: apply the law without political favor or interest. I expect most of the justices agree with the vast majority of countries — and the president — that birthright citizenship is a foolish and harmful policy. But they are not legislators; they are jurists tasked with constitutional interpretation.

Trump appointed three principled justices to the court. To their (and to his) credit, Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett have proven that they are driven by the underlying law, not the ultimate outcome of cases.

For conservatives, constitutional interpretations offer less leeway than their liberal colleagues or believers in the “living constitution.” If you believe in continually updating the Constitution from the bench to meet contemporary demands, constitutional language is barely a speed bump on your path to the preferred outcome in any given case. 

In my Supreme Court class, I call this a “default case” in which justices tend to run home.  When a record or the law is uncertain, conservative justices tend to avoid expansive, new interpretations. That was precisely what Trump said he wanted in nominees.

These justices are not being “disloyal” to him, but rather loyal to what they view as the meaning of the Constitution. I have at times disagreed with their view of the law, but I have never questioned their integrity.

None of this means we should accept the expected outcome in this case as the final word on birthright citizenship. Justice Robert Jackson once observed that he and his colleagues “are not final because we are infallible, we are infallible because we are final.”

The final word actually rests with the public. We can amend the Constitution to join most of the world in barring birthright citizenship. There is no more important question in a republic than the definition of citizenship.

We are becoming a virtual mockery as we watch millions game the birthright citizenship system. China alone has hundreds of tourism firms that have made fortunes in arranging for Chinese citizens to come to U.S. territory to give birth and then return home.

No republic can last without controlling its borders and the qualifications for citizenship. We have allowed U.S. citizenship to become a mere commodity for the most affluent or unscrupulous among us.

The combination of open borders and open-ended citizenship is an existential threat to this Republic. 

The U.S. is and will remain a nation of immigrants. We welcome lawful immigrants who come to this country to embrace our values and our common identity. But being a nation of immigrants does not mean that we are a nation of chumps.

In my book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss the foundations of our republic and the world’s fascination with it. After our Revolution, one leading Frenchman known as John Hector St. John wrote a popular book that asked: “What then is the American, this new man?”

The answer to that question was obvious at our founding. We were the world’s first true enlightenment revolution — a republic founded on natural rights that came not from the government but God. We did not have a shared bond of land, culture, religion, or history. We were a people founded on a legacy of ideas; a people joined by common articles of faith in natural, unalienable rights.

The question is whether we can answer St. John’s challenge today. “What then is this American” if citizenship can be based on as little as a tourist visa or an illegal crossing? 

There would be no better time to reaffirm the meaning of citizenship than the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. Roberts is correct: “It is the same Constitution” that created this republic, but we are the same people vested with the responsibility, as Benjamin Franklin put it, “to keep it.”

It is time to reclaim both the Constitution and our common identity. As a free people joined by a common faith in natural rights, it is our own birthright.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

 

'Anchor babies' - 'Birthright Citizenship' - another lawless evil that will bring down our once great Republic!

 

Trump’s Birthright Case: Irrefutable

Some justices are ignoring key arguments in birthright citizenship case.

Joe Fried | April 4, 2026 www.americanthinker.com

I listened intently to the Supreme Court’s oral arguments regarding birthright citizenship. It seems that some justices are ignoring key arguments in the case.

There is a residency requirement in the Citizenship Clause

In January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to parents who are either undocumented or in the country legally but on a temporary basis. The ACLU challenged the executive order, and the Supreme Court is considering the case. Solicitor General John Sauer is arguing on behalf of the Trump Administration.

Part of General Sauer’s case is simple and irrefutable: Most people should not gain citizenship via birth tourism. It is an atrocious policy, and it does not meet the express written requirements of the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

To his credit, Justice Clarence Thomas was quick to emphasize that fact. Certain words in the Citizenship Clause preclude the provision of citizenship for most people engaged in birth tourism.

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 (emphasis added).

In other words, there is a residency (or domicile) requirement, and that requirement cannot be not met by most people engaged in birth tourism. Typically, a woman flies to the U.S., delivers a baby, spends a few days in a hospital or birthing center, and flies home. She enters the country legally but doesn’t spend enough time in the U.S. to establish residency (domicile).

Based on what I heard in the oral arguments, there are other justices who understand and appreciate the domicile requirement. They are Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

On the other hand, John Roberts and the three liberal justices were indifferent to the clearly-worded requirements in the Citizenship Clause.

Sauer informed the Court that there are hundreds of birth tourism companies and may be over a million birth tourists (U.S. citizens) living in China. Most of those tourists had babies but did not establish residency in the United States. Nevertheless, Roberts was not impressed:

ROBERTS: Well, it certainly wasn't a problem in the 19th century.

SAUER: No, but, of course, we're -- we're in a new world now, as Justice Alito pointed out to, where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a -- a child who's a U.S. citizen.

ROBERTS: Well, it's a new world. It's the same Constitution.

The flippant comment of Justice Roberts (“It’s the same Constitution”) dismisses the importance of the residency requirement, even though it is expressly stated in the 14th Amendment.

Case law also has a domicile requirement

As an argument against the Trump Administration, Justice Sonia Sotomayor brought up a key immigration case from 1898: Wong Kim Ark. In that case, the Court ruled that individuals born on U.S. soil are citizens under the 14th Amendment, regardless of their parents' foreign citizenship.

However, Sotomayor overlooked the fact that, although the parents of Wong Kim were Chinese citizens, they were domiciled in the United States. The importance of that fact is evident from the concluding words of the court’s opinion:

We’ve decided that Chinese immigrants with a permanent domicile and residence here fall within the rule of birthright citizenship (emphasis added).

Justice Elena Kagan did not overlook the domicile requirement -- she simply does not believe it is important. That is evident from her blathering counterargument:

You say, oh, it says the word “domicile” a bunch of times, which it does. It’s a long opinion. It says a lot of things.

In reality, there is a domicile requirement in both the Citizenship clause of the constitution and in the crucial Wong Kim Ark case of 1898. Roberts and the other liberal justices are simply choosing to pretend it is not there.

Is the child of an illegal immigrant a citizen?

So far we have discussed birth tourism, where people enter the country legally, but stay for a very short time. What about people who enter illegally and stay for an extended period of time? Can they establish a domicile? If so, should their children be granted citizenship? To answer those questions we must focus on five specific words in the Citizenship Clause: subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

If a person is born in the U.S. and is subject to the jurisdiction thereof, our Constitution grants him or her citizenship. But, what exactly is “jurisdiction”? On that topic General Sauer had lots of facts but his arguments were probably too confusing to be persuasive to a skeptical Supreme Court.

The three liberals, who have suddenly become Scalia-styled “originalists,” argued that the Citizenship Clause originates from British law, and is essentially unchanged since the era of the Sovereign: King George III.

Justice Kagan again made reference to the Wong Kim Ark case, emphasizing its “English law rationale.”

But the rationale of the case is really quite clear. It says there was this common law tradition. It came from England. We know what it was. Everybody got citizenship by birth except for a few discrete categories...

AG Sauer disputed many of Kagan’s assertions regarding the Ark case, but the entire matter became muddled enough to easily allow the liberals on the court (and I include Roberts in that category) to weasel their way out of a sane ruling.

Here are some of the confusing issues: Does jurisdiction imply “allegiance” to the nation? If so, whose allegiance -- the parent’s or the child’s? And does it matter if the illegal alien is subject to a foreign power?

Other ambiguities are inherent in implementation. For example, does it matter if the illegal alien is or is not evading law enforcement? Does it matter if the illegal entrant has been in the country a week or for ten years?

Those are issues are confusing to most justices, but not to Ketanji Jackson. She sees the issue of allegiance with amazing clarity:

I was thinking, you know, I’m a U.S. citizen and visiting Japan and what it means is that, you know, if I steal someone’s wallet in Japan, the Japanese authorities can arrest me and prosecute me. It’s allegiance, meaning, they can control you as a matter of law.... So there’s this relationship...

Thus, to Jackson, people can gain citizenship by picking pockets!

As a matter of strategy, it might have been better if President Trump had limited the executive order to the relatively clear issue of temporary visitors who do not establish residency. If that were the sole issue, there might be a chance for a 5-4 victory.

Serious implications for fair elections and national security

The estimated number of U.S. citizens being raised in China is huge -- ranging from the thousands to over a million. A March 19, 2026 article in the New York Post described the situation this way:

China-watchers estimate about 1,000 companies offer birth tourism to the Northern Mariana Islands, other US overseas territories and even the US mainland. They claim a gob-smacking 1.5 million American babies are being raised in China by Chinese parents who’ve participated in birth tourism.

Based on U.S. and state election laws, they are all potentially U.S. voters -- even if they never set foot in the United States again.

Several states, mostly the ones controlled by Democrats, allow people who have never resided in the United States to vote from abroad, based on their parents’ last U.S. residence.

And each of the 50 states allows absentee voting by people after they have established residency. That is not hard to do. For most states, residency can be established in only 15 to 30 days.

As these tourism babies reach the age of 18, they could become a huge factor in swing state elections -- especially if their voting is directed and coordinated by the Chinese government.

For whom will they vote? I wonder.