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In a 60-page legal brief, Brett Shumate, the acting assistant attorney general of the agency’s civil rights division, says that Mayes and other state attorneys general lack standing to challenge the order.

Put simply, he is telling U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour that the only people who have the right to go into federal court are those who are somehow harmed by an action. And in this case, Shumate wrote, there is no such evidence.

He acknowledged that states are claiming that the order will face increased costs of having to provide health, social and administrative services to those individuals who under the Trump order would no longer be considered citizens and therefore be ineligible for federal benefits.

But Shumate pointed out there is nothing in Trump’s order, issued when he took office on Jan. 20, that requires the states to provide those services.

“Because the states have voluntarily chosen to provide certain benefits to aliens, the costs they incur to do so are the result of an independent choice made by the states’ legislatures and not attributable to the Citizenship Executive Order itself,’’ he told the judge, calling these “self-inflicted injuries.’’

It is true, Shumate said, that there is a federal law that requires hospitals, including public hospitals, to provide care in cases of emergency. But he said that is based on a different law that governs hospitals that choose to participate in Medicare.

Anyway, he said, there is a path for those denied citizenship to appeal: a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. But that right, he said, has to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

And if that’s not enough to convince Coughenour to toss the lawsuit or at least dissolve his restraining order at a hearing later this week, Shumate has a series of other arguments about whether the 14th Amendment really means what challengers to the order are contending.

In fact, he pointed out that the Supreme Court, in an 1898 case that Mayes and her allies are relying on to overturn the order, recognized an exception to birthright citizenship for “children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation.’’ And in this case, Shumate said, the president said the “unprecedented flood of illegal immigration’’ resulted in millions of people coming here illegally, many of whom “present significant threats to national security and public safety.’’

“Plaintiffs’ maximalist reading of the Citizenship Clause would require extending birthright citizenship to the children of individuals who present such threats, even including unlawful enemy combatants who enter this country in an effort to create sleeper cells or other hostile networks,’’ he said.

Hanging in the balance is Trump’s order spelling out who is no longer entitled to automatic presumption of citizenship that has been the practice.

One involves cases where the mother was not legally present in the country and the father was neither a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. The other involves women who were in the country legally but temporarily, such as on a visa, and the father wad neither a citizen or lawful permanent resident.

The teeth in the order directs federal agencies not to issue citizenship documents to those who fall under either circumstance and not to accept documents issued by state, local or other government purporting to recognize citizenship.

All that goes to what is the meaning of a provision in the 14th Amendment saying that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof’’ are citizens. Approved after the Civil War, it was designed to ensure that African Americans — including former slaves — had citizenship.

But in that 1898 case, the U.S. Supreme Court said that applied to Wong Kim Ark, born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants.

At age 21 he traveled to China to visit his parents who had returned to their home country. But when he returned he was denied entry on the grounds he was not a citizen based on the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

In a 6-2 ruling, the high court declared that the “explicit’’ language of the 14th Amendment voided that interpretation.

Shumate pointed out that the justices in that case did say the parents were “subject to the emperor of China.’’ But the court also noted that they “have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States’’ and were carrying on business.

That, he said, is not the case here.

“Temporary visitors to the United States, by definition, retain permanent homes in foreign countries,’’ Shumate wrote.

“And illegal aliens, by definition, have no right even to be present in the United States, much less a right to make a lawful residence here,’’ he continued. “Instead, as a matter of law, illegal aliens formally retain their foreign domiciles, because they have not yet been accepted to reside anywhere else.’’

And Shumate has another bit of history backing his argument.

He noted that at the time of that 1898 Supreme Court ruling even the justices acknowledged that members of Indian tribes also were not entitled to citizenship despite the fact that there was no question but that they were born within the borders of the United States.

“Yet members of Indian tribes are plainly subject to the United States’ regulatory powers,’’ Shumate said — the same argument that challengers to the executive order are making to say that entitle those born here to parents without legal status are entitled to automatic citizenship.

It was not until 1924 when President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act that granted citizenship status to all Native Americans born in the United States regardless of tribal affiliation.

“Illegal aliens and temporary visitors have far weaker connections to the United States than do members of Indian tribes,’’ Shumate told the judge. “If the United States’ link with Indian tribes does not suffice as a constitutional matter for birthright citizenship, its weaker link with illegal aliens and temporary visitors even more obviously does not do so.’’