From Moncada v. Rubio, decided Wednesday by the Ninth Circuit (Judge Anthony D. Johnstone, joined by Judges Johnnie B. Rawlinson and Morgan Christen):
Roberto Moncada was born in New York City in July 1950. His father, a Nicaraguan national, worked for Nicaragua's permanent mission to the United Nations. For nearly seventy years, Moncada lived and worked in the United States as an American citizen. Five times he subscribed the oath of allegiance, and five times the government issued Moncada a passport. In the district court's words: "A child was born in America and told by the United States government—his government—that he was an American citizen. And … it told him this again and again and again and again."
The government repeatedly affirmed that Moncada's father's apparent status as a Nicaraguan consul did not confer diplomatic immunity on his children. So, the government explained, Moncada was born "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States according to the Fourteenth Amendment. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. And under the Constitution, citizenship was his birthright.
But the government was, as the district court put it, "wrong all along." In 2018, the government reviewed its records and found that Moncada's father served as an attaché, not a consul, when Moncada was born. Unlike a consul, an attaché and his family possess full diplomatic immunity. So, the government now asserted, Moncada was not born "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. Therefore, he was not a birthright citizen. The government revoked Moncada's passport and told him he "did not acquire U.S. citizenship by virtue of [his] birth here."
