Trump's New Executive Orders Target Birthright Citizenship
The U.S. president signed two executive orders, reopening the legal battle over the limits of presidential power versus the 14th Amendment.
The U.S. president signed two executive orders, reopening the legal battle over the limits of presidential power versus the 14th Amendment.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed two new executive orders on Thursday, again attempting to narrow the right to automatic citizenship for those born on U.S. soil. This move came just weeks after the Supreme Court struck down his earlier, broader attempt to eliminate that right, signaling the continuation of an intense legal and political struggle.
The first of the signed orders expands the list of situations in which children born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents would not automatically receive citizenship. The new measures target cases where one parent is a member of a foreign terrorist organization, an employee of a foreign government, someone who has attempted to obtain citizenship through fraud, or someone living in U.S. territories where that right is not governed by federal law.
The second order directly targets the practice known as "birth tourism," where pregnant women come to the United States with the primary goal of giving birth to a child who would automatically become a U.S. citizen. The president claims this is a widespread abuse of the system, asserting that "hundreds of thousands" of children have been born this way.
These figures, however, differ significantly from independent estimates. According to data from the Migration Policy Institute, approximately 22,000 to 26,000 such births are recorded annually. The same organization cites government data showing about 9,600 births to mothers with foreign addresses in 2024, which is several times lower than Trump's claims.
The right to birthright citizenship in the U.S. is based on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and has been in effect for over 150 years. Trump had already attempted to significantly limit its interpretation through an executive order at the start of his new term in 2025, but that move ended up before the Supreme Court.
The new orders almost certainly open a new legal conflict. Law professor Gabriel Chin warned that while the president has certain powers to restrict entry to individuals coming solely for childbirth, the key question is whether the executive branch can subsequently deny citizenship to a child already born on American soil.
At the heart of the dispute lies precisely this question: Trump is trying to address the problem of illegal migration and abuse of the visa system through executive powers, while the courts will again have to determine the boundary between presidential authority and constitutional protection of a right acquired by birth itself.
