Washington, August 7, 2026: US President Donald Trump has made a fresh attempt to restrict birthright citizenship, signing two executive orders weeks after the US Supreme Court rejected his earlier, broader effort to deny automatic citizenship to children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents.
Trump signed the orders on Thursday, seeking to expand the categories of children who would not automatically qualify for US citizenship and to curb so-called “birth tourism”, The Guardian reported. The measures are expected to face legal challenges.
Restricting birthright citizenship has long been part of Trump’s immigration agenda, but his attempts to change the constitutional guarantee have so far been unsuccessful.
Trump criticised the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling on Thursday, calling it “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.”
First Order Seeks To Expand Citizenship Exceptions
The first executive order seeks to widen the categories of children who would not qualify for 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.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a key architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, said the administration wants to expand the exceptions to include children of members of “foreign terrorist organizations” and “large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments”. It remains unclear who would be covered by the latter category.
The order also seeks to broaden the existing exception covering children of foreign ambassadors to include more foreign government employees.
It further identifies people born in “a territory or territorial waters of the United States where citizenship is not conferred by federal statute” as ineligible for automatic citizenship. At present, this applies only to American Samoa.
The order would also deny birthright citizenship to children whose parents “engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship”.
Second Order Targets ‘Birth Tourism’
Trump’s second executive order targets “birth tourism”, referring to travel to the US with the intention of giving birth there so that the child acquires US citizenship.
Trump claimed on Thursday, without providing evidence, that “hundreds of thousands” of people had engaged in the 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”. That amounts to less than 1 per cent of all babies born in the US each year.
The second order directs federal agencies to target “birth tourism operators” who organise such travel to the US.
Travelling to the US under the pretext of tourism while actually intending to give birth so that a child automatically obtains citizenship constitutes visa fraud and is already illegal. This raises questions about what practical impact the latest directive would have beyond existing law.
New Orders Expected To Face Court Challenges
The two executive orders are almost certain to face legal challenges.
On June 30, the US Supreme Court voided Trump’s Day One executive order that sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born to parents who were in the US illegally or on temporary visas. The ruling reaffirmed the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to nearly everyone born on US soil.
The latest directives seek to test the limits of that ruling by expanding the categories of people the Trump administration argues are outside the citizenship guarantee of the 14th Amendment. The administration is separately directing federal agencies to step up action against birth tourism.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on Thursday that the orders represented another unconstitutional attempt to dismantle birthright citizenship following the administration’s Supreme Court defeat in June.
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“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.”
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