'Alito is an anchor baby!' Fox pundit hits right-wing justice with explosive claim

A Fox guest called Justice Samuel Alito an "anchor baby" on live television Tuesday, but the attack is almost certainly false.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that day to uphold birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump's executive order to restrict it. Alito was one of three justices who dissented.

Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney with Kuck Baxter Immigration, was on LiveNOW from Fox, a sibling channel of Fox News, discussing the ruling when he made the claim.

"So, yes, I get where the opponents of this are coming from, but somebody pointed out to me something really interesting today: Justice Alito, who wrote his own dissent in this case, is, in fact, an anchor baby," Kuck said. "His parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born, much like Ted Cruz and other prominent Republicans who are immigrants or the children of immigrants. This amendment is what really makes us America."

In his dissent, Alito argued that children born to noncitizen parents are automatically claimed as nationals by their parents' home country, making them "subject to a foreign power" rather than the United States.

Alito's father arrived in the U.S. from Italy as an infant in 1914. By the time his son was born in 1950, he held a master's degree from Rutgers and worked as a public high school teacher in New Jersey, a job that has long required U.S. citizenship.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was born in Calgary, Canada, to a mother who was already a U.S. citizen.

Kuck made clear he supports the ruling itself.

"So I, for one, applaud the Supreme Court. I wish it were a 9-0 decision, but we'll take what we can get," he insisted. "Now the law is clear, and we can move on, hopefully, to fixing our broken immigration system instead of arguing about a constitutional amendment that was settled 160 years ago."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio does fit the definition of "anchor baby" that Kuck used.

Rubio was born in Miami in 1971 to Cuban immigrant parents, according to Newsweek. His parents didn't become U.S. citizens until 1975, four years after he was born.