Trying to argue the 14th amendment doesn’t read as plainly as it does was a no-win situation. The government would have to argue it does not have jurisdiction (subject to the jurisdiction thereof) over illegal immigrants which would seemingly (IANAL) mean they’re immune to prosecution for any crime.

You could probably find a hair splitting argument that the child must be born in an actual ‘State’, but aside from that, jus soli citizenship is pretty clearly part of the constitution.

That being said, Pam Bondi was very bad at her job.

Her job (under the current president):

1. Be unquestioningly loyal to the president

2. Prosecute his enemies, such as Comey, Bolton, and Perkins Coie

3. Reward his allies, such as Eric Adams, everyone who violates the Hatch Act in a way that pleases him, and the people he tells to sue the USG so he can direct the DoJ to settle

4. Put crazy stuff like birthright citizenship and IEEPA in front of the Supreme Court

5. Slow roll the Epstein files, don't prosecute anyone

6. Expedite deportations by any means necessary

How much more can you ask of her?

> That being said, Pam Bondi was very bad at her job.

Perhaps so. (In fact, I suspect so.) But having a boss that keeps putting you in impossible situations is not conducive to good performance reviews. She got fired for failing to deliver on Trump's fantasies of how the legal system ought to treat him. A different AG isn't going to do too much better, because too many of Trump's positions are legally insane.

The genesis of the Fourteenth Amenedment was to deny citizenship to any circumventing said jurisdiction, as the Confederate states had done. As illegal aliens have all done. Seems pretty cut and dry to me, especially considering SCOTUS previously ruled American Indians were not under the jurisdiction of The United States after the Fourteenth was ratified, requiring Congress to enact a law granting them citizenship.

DACA is another example, The Obama Administration could not get legislation passed to grant citizenship to those individuals, so drafted an Executive Order to not enforce the law (as he had previously sworn an Oath to do, I might add). And now many of those individuals are facing deportation.