U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview posted yesterday that he intends to sign an executive order that would terminate birthright citizenships in part of an effort to end “anchor babies” and “chain migration.”

Trump told “Axios on HBO,” that the U.S. is the only country in the world “where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States ... with all of those benefits.”

Trump called birthright citizenship “ridiculous” and that “it has to end.”

Under the Constitution, anyone born in the U.S. – regardless of whether it is by a noncitizen or unauthorized immigrant – is considered a citizen. There is an amendment that has been interpreted to mean that any woman who gives birth on American soil has given birth to a U.S. citizen. The interpretation has been blamed for so-called “birth tourism” and chain migration.

The interview was released after Trump told Fox News that Central American migrants who are approaching the U.S.-Mexico border in caravans are “wasting their time” and vowed, “they are not coming in.”

Trump spoke to “The Ingraham Angle” hours after the Pentagon announced it would deploy some 5,200 troops to the southern border in what the commander of U.S. Northern Command described as an effort to “harden the southern border” by stiffening defenses at and near legal entry points.

“When they are captured, we don’t let them out,” Trump told host Laura Ingraham. “We’re not letting them out ... We’re not catching, we’re not releasing ... We’re not letting them into this country.”

“As we sit right here today, we have about 800 soldiers that are on their way to Texas right now,” Air Force General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, told a press conference Monday afternoon.

The soldiers will be armed and will be deployed with heavy equipment such as helicopters but their role will be limited to providing “mission enhancing capabilities,” officials said.

The announcement came as a caravan of migrants is slowly making its way from Central America to the southwest border of the United States.

There are approximately 3,500 people in one group, which is currently at the Chiapas-Oaxaca border in southern Mexico, Andrew Meehan, assistant commissioner of public affairs of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told reporters.

A second group of about 3,000 migrants is at the border crossing between Guatemala and Mexico, he added.

(SD-Agencies)