A Second Attempt After a Major Legal Defeat
Just weeks after the Supreme Court delivered a decisive rebuke to his immigration agenda, President Donald Trump is pressing forward on birthright citizenship — this time with a narrower, though still legally contested, approach. Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday aimed at restricting who qualifies for automatic citizenship at birth, framing the move as a workaround to what he called "a bad decision, very unfair decision" by the high court [1].
The orders mark the latest chapter in a prolonged legal and political battle over the 14th Amendment, which has guaranteed birthright citizenship for more than 150 years [1].
What the Orders Actually Do
The first executive order expands existing definitions of non-citizens whose children are deemed ineligible for birthright citizenship. Specifically, it targets babies born in the United States to two non-citizen parents when at least one parent falls into one of four categories: membership in a foreign terrorist organization, employment by a foreign government, attempted fraud in seeking citizenship, or residence in a US territory where citizenship is not conferred by federal statute [1].
That last carve-out is notable. Birthright citizenship for people born in territories like Puerto Rico is protected by federal statute, not just constitutional interpretation, and the order explicitly acknowledges that distinction [1].
The second order takes aim at so-called birth tourism — the practice of pregnant women traveling to the United States specifically to give birth and secure citizenship for their child. Trump and senior officials have long targeted the practice, accusing adversaries including Russia and China of exploiting it [1].
"The idea is that people come here pretending to be a tourist, pretending to be a visitor," said Stephen Miller, homeland security advisor and White House deputy chief of staff for policy, speaking alongside the president. "But the real reason they're here is to have a child, to make that child an automatic citizen, leave our country and then have a US citizen child" [1].
Miller argued that the president holds authority to ban birth tourism under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act granting the executive branch power to set exceptions and limitations on who may enter the country [1].
How Big Is Birth Tourism, Really?
Trump claimed from the Oval Office that hundreds of thousands of babies are born through birth tourism in the United States each year [1]. That figure is sharply at odds with independent research.
The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, has estimated that the most expansive census-based calculation puts the number at roughly 22,000 to 26,000 births annually from birth tourism. Government data cited by the institute recorded approximately 9,600 births to mothers with foreign addresses in 2024 [1].
The discrepancy between the president's claims and available data is significant. Even at the high end of independent estimates, birth tourism accounts for a fraction of the roughly 3.6 million births recorded in the United States each year.
Legal Experts See Constitutional Fault Lines
Constitutional scholars are already flagging vulnerabilities in the new orders. Gabriel Chin, a law professor at the University of California Davis School of Law, told the BBC that while portions of the orders may survive legal scrutiny, others carry serious constitutional problems [1].
Chin acknowledged that the president likely has some authority to restrict people from entering the United States for the explicit purpose of giving birth. "But once it does happen, once a child is born in the United States, I don't think the president has any power to decide that that child is not a citizen," he said, noting that the Supreme Court's recent ruling had effectively settled that question [1].
Chin also pushed back on the framing of birth tourism as a significant policy crisis, calling it "a drop in the bucket" relative to the millions of births occurring in the country annually and describing it as "an unusual phenomenon" [1].
That legal skepticism echoes the fate of Trump's original effort. In January 2025, on one of his first days back in office, Trump signed an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship outright as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. After a protracted legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled in June that the policy could not stand [1].
The Broader Immigration Context
Thursday's executive orders are part of a sustained effort by the Trump administration to reshape who can live, work, and gain citizenship in the United States. The administration has repeatedly argued that birthright citizenship, as currently interpreted, creates national security vulnerabilities and incentivizes illegal immigration and visa abuse [1].
"My Administration has guarded against the risks posed by malign foreign actors who attempt to swindle American citizens by taking advantage of the generosity of our Nation," the first executive order states [1].
Critics, including constitutional law scholars, argue that the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause is not subject to executive reinterpretation and that the Supreme Court's June ruling made that plain. The new orders appear designed to probe the edges of what executive power can accomplish without directly challenging the amendment's core guarantee — a strategy that may or may not survive the inevitable legal challenges ahead.
What to Watch Next
Legal challenges to both orders are virtually certain, and courts will need to determine whether the executive branch can restrict entry for birth tourism purposes and, separately, whether the expanded non-citizen categories in the first order withstand 14th Amendment scrutiny. The administration's success in the first case — restricting who may enter — appears more plausible than in the second, where the Supreme Court has already spoken. Watch for injunctions from federal district courts in the coming days, and for the administration's legal theory on the Immigration and Nationality Act to face its first serious judicial test.
