In an interview with Axios released on Tuesday, Donald Trump unveiled the latest assault in his war on immigrants: He plans to sign an executive order to end birthright citizenship in the U.S.

It's hard to ignore the timing of this announcement. It came just one week before an election, and the most consistent means Trump has of turning out his base is whipping up anti-immigrant hysteria. But it's also shortly after a politically-motivated massacre at a synagogue for its congregation's work with refugees. Trump's underlings have been desperately trying to change that story into something else, with Kellyanne Conway claiming that it was actually an attack on religion in general and the fault of late-night comedians. And while it's true that Trump can't overrule the Constitution via executive order, this is also coming after he and the GOP secured an extreme rightwing Supreme Court, replacing the swing-voting Anthony Kennedy with Brett Kavanaugh, who thinks presidents deserve a great deal more power and leniency when they happen to be Republican.

Trump backed up his stance by claiming that the U.S. is the only country that allows birthright citizenship, which is either a lie or evidence that he has no idea what he's saying since Canada, Mexico, and nearly every country in South America have it. In the U.S., it was codified by the 14th Amendment to allow the children of slaves to become citizens. It's impossible to see Trump's attempts to subvert that amendment as anything other than an attack on the already minimally-enforced constitutional protections of nonwhite people living in America.

To anyone who heard Trump rant about the horrors of immigrants during his campaign, this may be shocking but not surprising. During the Republican primaries he and other candidates like Ben Carson expressed dismay at one of the basic tenets of American citizenship and vowed to do something about it. At the time it seemed like bluster, hyperbolic nationalism designed to rile up the most xenophobic voters. But since Trump's election, he's constantly escalated attempts to imprison, deport, malign, and make miserable as many immigrants as possible—documented or not, citizens or not. It's integral to the white identity politics he and his enablers have been playing, and it's the one thing we can expect them stick to no matter what.