US President Donald Trump has signed two new executive orders aimed at restricting birthright citizenship, weeks after the Supreme Court blocked his previous attempt to end the constitutional right.
The first order broadens the categories of non-citizens whose children would not automatically qualify for US citizenship at birth. The second bans birth tourism, the practice of pregnant women travelling to the US to give birth so their children can obtain American citizenship.
“This should have happened years ago, but we’re taking care of it now,” Trump said from the Oval Office as he criticised the Supreme Court’s decision to reject his earlier effort to end the 150-year-old policy.
“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 says.
Under the order, automatic citizenship would not apply to babies born in the US to two non-citizen parents if one parent is a member of a foreign terrorist group, a foreign government employee, has attempted to obtain citizenship through fraud, or is living in a US territory where citizenship is not granted under federal law.
Birthright citizenship for people born in US territories such as Puerto Rico remains protected under federal statute.
Trump and senior administration officials have repeatedly criticised birth tourism, accusing foreign nationals, including those from Russia and China, of exploiting the system.
Speaking at the White House, Trump claimed that hundreds of thousands of babies had been born in the US through birth tourism.
However, the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute estimates that between 22,000 and 26,000 babies are born each year through birth tourism. Government data cited by the institute also showed there were 9,600 births to mothers with foreign addresses in 2024.
“The idea (is) that people come here pretending to be a tourist, pretending to be a visitor,” Stephen Miller, homeland security adviser and White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said.
“But the real reason they’re here is to have a child, to make that child an automatic citizen, (to) leave our country and then have a US citizen child,” he said, adding that those children then gain access to welfare benefits, the voting booth, and “all the other rights and privileges that belong solely to Americans”.
Miller argued that the president has the authority to ban birth tourism under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the president to set exceptions and limitations on entry into the United States.
Shortly after returning to office in 2025, Trump signed an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
That policy was challenged in court, and in June the Supreme Court ruled that it could not stand, leaving birthright citizenship unchanged. The ruling marked a major setback for Trump’s efforts to tighten US citizenship rules.
The president criticised the judgment, calling it “a bad decision, very unfair decision”.
“Our country suffers because of it, and we’re ending in a different way,” Trump said.
Gabriel Chin, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Law, said parts of the latest orders could survive legal scrutiny, but warned that others “raise some serious constitutional questions”.
He said the president may have authority to restrict people entering the US for the 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.
Chin also described birth tourism as “a drop in the bucket” compared with the millions of births recorded in the US each year.
“It’s an unusual phenomenon,” he said.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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