Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters suggested President Donald Trump should investigate and potentially deport first lady Melania Trump during an anti-DOGE protest in Los Angeles over the weekend.
“When he [Trump] talks about birthright, and he’s going to undo the fact that the Constitution allows those who are born here, even if the parents are undocumented, they have a right to stay in America. If he wants to start looking so closely to find those who were born here and their parents were undocumented, maybe he ought to first look at Melania,” Waters was seen saying from the stage of a rally in Los Angeles, various videos posted to social media show.
“We don’t know whether or not her parents were documented. And maybe we better just take a look,” she added.
Melania Trump was born in the former Yugoslavia and became a U.S. citizen in 2006, according to official government biographies of the first lady. She is the first U.S. first lady to become a naturalized citizen, and the second first lady to be born outside of the U.S. – following President John Quincy Adams’ wife Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, who was born in London in 1775.
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Rep. Maxine Waters participates in a march in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 22, 2025. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The first lady sponsored her parents, who were also from current-day Slovenia, for green cards and then citizenship after securing her own citizenship, the New York Times reported in 2018. Viktor and Amalija Knavs, the first lady’s parents, officially became U.S. citizens in 2018. Amalija Knavs died in 2024, while her father Viktor Knavs has been spotted with the Trump family during public events in recent months, including sitting next to first son Barron Trump during the inauguration.
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President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk on the south lawn of the White House. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Waters was referring to President Donald Trump signing an executive order on his first day in office that bans birthright citizenship. The executive order works to clarify the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
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Viktor and Amalija Knavs, the parents of first lady Melania Trump, depart the White House on Nov. 26, 2019. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The Trump EO seeks to narrow the scope of birthright citizenship to ban individuals who were born to illegal immigrant parents, or those who were here legally but on temporary non-immigrant visas.
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The executive order is currently tied up in court, with Trump taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court last week.
President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Barron Trump and Viktor Knav, father of Melania, on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025. (Getty Images)
Waters joined the protest in Los Angeles on Saturday, where hundreds gathered in protest of the Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to slim down the size of the federal government, including auditing federal agencies in search of overspending, fraud and corruption. Protesters marched to the VA hospital on Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard as part of the rally, the Los Angeles Times reported.
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Rep. Maxine Waters speaks to a crowd during a rally outside of the Wilshire Federal Building in Westwood on Saturday, March 22, 2025. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“We are here because we are not going to let Trump, we’re not going to let Elon Musk, his co-president, or anybody else take the United States Constitution down,” Waters added in her address to the crowd on Saturday.
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Clips of Waters’ comments on the first lady are spreading like wildfire on social media, including on TikTok and X, as conservative critics slam the left-wing California lawmaker.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Waters’ office for additional comment on the matter Tuesday morning, but did not immediately receive a reply.