The Washington Post called out “the myth of the 'anchor baby'” for being a “largely a mythical idea” with little basis in the law.

On August 17, Donald Trump released the details of his immigration plan, which calls for Mexico to pay for the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and seeks to end birthright citizenship in the United States. The following night on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Trump defended his extreme immigration proposals by repeatedly referring to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants as “anchor babies” and insisting that they are not U.S. citizens. Conservative media have since applauded the presidential candidate for using the derogatory term as other candidates such as Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal also embraced it.

But, as The Washington Post explained in an August 20 article, “the anchor baby, while potent politically, is largely a mythical idea.” Writing that the term has “little legal underpinning” as “being the parent of a U.S. citizen child almost never forms the core of a successful defense in immigration court,” the articles notes that most children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents “must wait until their 21st birthday to begin the lengthy process” of helping their parents become citizens: