President Donald Trump makes moves to circumvent Supreme Court decision, signs executive order aimed at narrowing access to birthright citizenship
President Donald Trump signed two executive orders targeting birthright citizenship and so-called “birth tourism,” marking his second attempt to restrict automatic citizenship after the Supreme Court struck down his broader 2025 order.
Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said his administration was taking a new approach after what he called a “very unfortunate” Supreme Court ruling. One order seeks to narrow the categories of children eligible for U.S. citizenship based on their parents’ status, while the other targets people who travel to the U.S. to give birth.
According to Fox News, Trump said, “We’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair. They’re building businesses around birthright citizenship. That’s not the way it was supposed to work. It’s a disgrace. They’re buying their way in and we’re not going to let it happen.”
The Supreme Court ruling that preceded the orders
The Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Barbara that the Constitution extends citizenship to children born in the United States when no recognized exception applies. The 6-3 ruling struck down Trump’s 2025 executive order, which sought to deny citizenship to children born to undocumented parents.
CNN reported that Trump was “taking another swing at limiting so-called birth tourism and birthright citizenship,” citing what he called a “very unfortunate decision” from the Supreme Court. The network said the new orders “appear to largely tighten laws already in place and narrow recognized exceptions” compared with the broader 2025 order.
What the first order does
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and an architect of Trump’s immigration policy, outlined the groups affected by the first order during the signing.
Miller said the order applies to “alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments.” According to CNN, children born to people in those categories would be ineligible for automatic citizenship.
The White House fact sheet said the order “non-exhaustively identifies certain categories of children of aliens who are not entitled to birthright citizenship consistent with historical exceptions to birthright citizenship recognized by the Supreme Court in Barbara.”
What the second order does
The second order focuses directly on birth tourism by tightening visa restrictions on foreign visitors.
NBC News reported that the order is “focused on stopping people from coming to the U.S. to give birth.” The White House said it “delegates presidential authorities to the Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security and directs them to halt the practice of birth tourism.”
During the signing, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer cited congressional findings on the practice, saying, “the congressional report that we cite in our brief talks about certain hotspots, like Russian elites coming to Miami through these birth tourism companies.”
NBC News reported that the written order was “narrower in scope than the previous one shot down by the Supreme Court and appeared to focus on restricting automatic citizenship to specific categories of people, including children born to adults with connections to foreign embassies or organizations as well as anyone” covered by the birth-tourism provisions.
Territories and diplomatic exceptions
Time reported that one order also restricts birthright citizenship for children born to noncitizen parents in U.S. territories or territorial waters where citizenship is not automatically granted by federal statute, such as American Samoa.
Civil rights groups push back
The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the orders shortly after Trump signed them.
Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement carried by Time: “the Supreme Court already decided this issue: Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution.”
Time also cited the Migration Policy Institute’s assessment that birth tourism is “rare” but receives “outsized public attention and legal scrutiny” relative to its scale.
The U.S. recorded an estimated 3.6 million births in 2025. Government data show fewer than 10,000 births in the country to mothers with foreign addresses in 2024, according to the magazine.
Trump’s long-running focus on birthright citizenship
Axios traced Trump’s rhetoric on the issue to a Truth Social post earlier this year in which he wrote that “birthright citizenship is not about rich people from China and the rest of the World, who want their children and hundreds of thousands more, FOR PAY, to ridiculously become citizens of the United States of America.”
University of Virginia immigration law professor Amanda Frost told PolitiFact, in remarks cited by Axios, that “if birth tourism is a problem, the answer is to enforce that regulation.”
Axios also reported that the administration’s legal theory rests on the argument that the Supreme Court’s June ruling still allows Trump to limit birthright citizenship under long-standing exceptions recognized by the court.
Legal outlook
NBC News reported that it remains “not immediately clear how successful the president’s most recent attempt to restrict birthright citizenship would be.”
Axios similarly reported that the orders are “sure to be challenged in court as a violation of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to nearly everyone born in America.”