President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end birthright citizenship during his second term. Could he actually do it?

In a Dec. 8 interview with NBC News, Trump reiterated his plans to do away with birthright citizenship on his first day in office, which is six weeks away.

When pressed for details on how he would achieve this, Trump suggested he could use executive action.

“We have to end it. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “ ... We have to get rid of this system. It’s killing our country.”

But, according to legal experts, the president-elect does not have a leg to stand on.

What is birthright citizenship?

Birthright citizenship is a doctrine enshrined in Section One of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which grants citizenship to people “born or naturalized” in the country.

The amendment, which was ratified in 1868 — three years after the Civil War ended — was drawn up to give citizenship to recently freed slaves, Erin Corcoran, a professor at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, told McClatchy News.

But, the law applies to anyone who is born in the U.S. — including those born to undocumented immigrants.

“The idea is that your citizenship is tied to where you’re from, not where your parents are from,” Corcoran, who researches immigration law, said.

Could Trump end it?

Trump does not possess the authority to repeal birthright citizenship, according to multiple legal experts.

Instead, the power falls to Congress and the states, Corcoran said, adding “the president has no role in this.”

“Ending birthright citizenship would require an amendment to the text of the U.S. Constitution, specifically to the Fourteenth Amendment,” Hiroshi Motomura, an immigration law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told McClatchy News.

And repealing or altering an amendment is next to impossible — because of the level of support needed.

At least two-thirds of both the Senate and the House of Representatives would need to propose an amendment, according to the White House. After this, three-quarters of the state legislatures would need to ratify the amendment for it to take effect.

Alternatively, two thirds of states may call a constitutional convention to propose an amendment. Three-quarters of the state legislatures would still need to ratify the amendment.

If Trump were to pass an executive order stopping birthright citizenship, it “would trigger immediate litigation,” Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School, told McClatchy News.

“When a court strikes down his executive order, he will be able to claim that he tried but that the courts illegally rejected his order,” Yale-Loehr said, adding that the move is “just another publicity stunt.”

Do other countries have birthright citizenship?

During his recent NBC News interview, Trump claimed the U.S. was alone in offering citizenship to anyone born in the country.

“Do you know we’re the only country in the world that has it?” he said. “Do you know that? There’s not one other country.”

This is not true, though, legal experts said.

“A 2020 report by the Library of Congress lists more than 30 countries that allow unconditional citizenship at birth …” Yale-Loehr said.

The vast majority of these countries are in North and South America, and they include Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

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