Donald Trump has made a second attempt to restrict the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, just weeks after the US supreme court rejected his initial, more sweeping bid to deny automatic citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents.
Trump on Thursday signed two executive orders that seek to broaden the categories of children ineligible for automatic US citizenship and ban so-called “birth tourism”. The directives are expected to face legal challenges.
Trump has long sought to dismantle birthright citizenship and has made the effort a centerpiece of his second-term immigration crackdown. He has thus far been unsuccessful.
On Thursday, the president lashed out at the supreme court over what he called “a very unfortunate decision in the supreme court concerning birthright”.
“It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision,” Trump told reporters. “So we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair.”
A first new order seeks to expand the definitions of children who would not be able to receive birthright citizenship.
Historical exceptions to the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment have included children born in the US to foreign sovereigns and diplomats; children of occupying foreign forces; children born on foreign ships; and children of Indigenous Americans.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, said the order aims to expand the categories to include children of members of “foreign terrorist organizations” as well as “large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments”, though it is unclear who would fall into the latter category.
The order also seeks to broaden the exception of children born to foreign ambassadors to include more foreign government employees, and refers to people born in “a territory or territorial waters of the United States where citizenship is not conferred by federal statute” as ineligible. At the moment, that only includes American Samoa.
The order would also deny birthright citizenship to children whose parents “engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship”.
The second order targets “birth tourism” – travel to the US with the intention of giving birth so that the child will acquire US citizenship. Trump claimed on Thursday, without pointing at any evidence, that “hundreds of thousands” of people have undertaken this practice.
“They’ve taken birthright citizenship and they’ve made a joke out of it,” Trump told reporters. “People are building businesses around it. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. It’s a disgrace. They’re buying their way in, and we’re not going to let it happen.”
According to the Migration Policy Institute, the highest census-based estimate “puts birth tourism at 22,000 to 26,000 babies born annually on US soil, although government data show just 9,600 births to mothers with foreign addresses in 2024” – less than 1% of all the babies born in the United States each year.
The second order directs federal agencies to target “birth tourism operators” who arrange such travel to the US.
Traveling to the US under the guise of tourism while actually intending to give birth so the child automatically obtains citizenship constitutes visa fraud and is already illegal, raising questions about the practical implications of the new order beyond existing law.
Thursday’s executive orders will almost certainly be challenged in court. On 30 June, the US supreme court voided his Day One-executive order denying automatic citizenship to children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas, reaffirming that the constitution guarantees citizenship to nearly everyone born on US soil are American citizens.
Trump’s new directives aim to test the boundaries of that ruling by expanding the categories of people the administration argues fall outside the 14th amendment’s citizenship guarantee, while separately directing agencies to intensify their efforts to stop birth tourism.
The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday said the orders were another unconstitutional attempt to undo birthright citizenship after the administration’s defeat at the supreme court in June.
“The supreme court already decided this issue: birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the constitution. No additional executive order can change the meaning of the constitution,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Any executive order that tries to rewrite birthright citizenship will meet the same fate as the last one.”
