During a recent rally in Los Angeles protesting the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) implied that President Donald Trump should scrutinize First Lady Melania Trump’s immigration history. Waters’ remarks were part of her criticism against the administration’s efforts to end birthright citizenship.
At the rally, Waters stated, “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.”
Melania Trump was born in Slovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, and immigrated to the United States in 1996 on a travel visa. She later obtained an H1-B visa, allowing her to work legally as a model. In 2006, after marrying Donald Trump, she became a U.S. citizen, making her the first naturalized American to become First Lady.
The First Lady also sponsored her parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, for green cards, leading to their U.S. citizenship in 2018. Her mother, Amalija, passed away in January 2024.
Waters’ comments were in response to President Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship, which grants automatic citizenship to individuals born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The 14th Amendment states, “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 administration seeks to reinterpret this clause to exclude children born to non-citizen parents.
Representative Maxine Waters’ remarks reflect the hypocrisy of the left’s immigration rhetoric. While Democrats claim to champion immigrants, Waters is now targeting a legal immigrant who followed the proper process simply because she is married to President Trump.
