WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders aimed at restricting certain pathways to automatic U.S. citizenship at birth and intensifying federal action against what his administration calls “birth tourism,” reopening a constitutional fight that the Supreme Court appeared to settle only weeks ago.
The new directives are significantly narrower than Trump’s January 2025 order, which sought to deny citizenship to many children born in the United States to parents without citizenship or lawful permanent residency. The Supreme Court struck down that broader effort on June 30, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees citizenship to people born in the United States who are subject to the nation’s jurisdiction.
Trump’s latest orders seek instead to expand or clarify limited historical exceptions to that constitutional guarantee, while directing the State and Homeland Security departments to curb travel to the United States for the purpose of securing citizenship for a newborn. The administration says the measures protect the “meaning and value” of U.S. citizenship; civil-rights advocates say they are another legally vulnerable attempt to narrow a constitutional right through presidential action.
A narrower strategy
At the White House on Thursday, Trump described the orders as a renewed effort to reduce the number of people who receive citizenship simply by being born on U.S. soil. One order identifies categories of children whom the administration says do not qualify for birthright citizenship under existing Supreme Court-recognized exceptions. The other directs federal agencies to take further action against “birth tourism.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said the first order targets children born to people described as “alien enemies,” members of designated foreign terrorist organizations, and certain individuals acting on behalf of foreign governments. He also said the administration would move against arrangements in which prospective parents pay to secure a U.S. birth or use a surrogate in the country to obtain citizenship for a child.
The orders are crafted to avoid restating the core policy struck down by the Supreme Court. Trump’s earlier directive had attempted to deny citizenship to U.S.-born children when their mother was undocumented or legally present only on a temporary visa and their father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. It was blocked in lower courts before the Supreme Court invalidated it.
The new approach instead focuses on circumstances the administration says fall outside the constitutional phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Historically, the principal exceptions have involved children of foreign diplomats and children born to hostile occupying forces.
What the first order targets
The first executive order does not purport to eliminate birthright citizenship for all children born to undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders. Rather, it seeks to withhold citizenship documentation from children born in a narrower set of situations, according to White House and media summaries.
Those categories include children whose parents are foreign diplomats or foreign-government employees operating in the United States, as well as children whose parents are allegedly affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations or act on behalf of foreign governments. The administration also says it will scrutinize situations involving what it calls commercial transactions designed to “purchase or access” birthright citizenship.
The distinction is legally important. The Supreme Court’s June ruling rejected Trump’s earlier broad effort to deny citizenship based largely on a parent’s immigration status. But the Court has long recognized that children of diplomats generally are not automatically citizens at birth because accredited diplomats are not ordinarily subject to full U.S. jurisdiction.
The administration argues that its latest order fits within those established limits. The White House fact sheet says it “non-exhaustively identifies” categories of children of noncitizens who are not entitled to citizenship under historical exceptions recognized by the Supreme Court.
Still, legal scholars and immigrant-rights groups are expected to contest whether the order simply identifies existing exceptions or attempts to expand them beyond constitutional precedent. The language involving foreign-government advocacy, alleged terrorist affiliations and commercial arrangements is likely to become a central point of litigation because those categories are far less settled than the traditional diplomatic exception.
The order on “birth tourism”
The second order directs the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to increase enforcement against “birth tourism,” defined by the administration as travel to the United States on a nonimmigrant visa primarily for the purpose of giving birth so a child can obtain U.S. citizenship.
The order calls for stronger screening, visa denials or revocations, and additional steps against people suspected of facilitating such travel. It also seeks action against commercial enterprises that advertise or arrange U.S. births for foreign clients.
Birth tourism has been a target of immigration restrictionists for years, though it is difficult to measure because pregnancies have many personal, medical, and family-related reasons for travel. A federal regulation implemented during Trump’s first term already barred applicants from receiving temporary tourist or business visas when their primary purpose was to obtain U.S. citizenship for a child through birth in the country.
That existing rule raises a practical question about the new order: whether it creates meaningful new enforcement authority or mainly instructs agencies to apply existing law more aggressively. CNN reported that the order’s effect remains uncertain because current visa regulations already prohibit travel primarily intended to secure citizenship for a newborn.
Trump administration officials say the directive will make enforcement clearer and more consistent. Critics are likely to argue that aggressive implementation could lead consular officers and border agents to make intrusive judgments about travelers’ pregnancies, intentions and medical needs.
The constitutional backdrop
Birthright citizenship is rooted in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War. It states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” are citizens of the United States and the state where they reside.
For more than a century, courts have generally interpreted that provision to grant citizenship to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of a parent’s immigration status. The central precedent is the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that a U.S.-born child of Chinese immigrants was a citizen despite the anti-Chinese immigration laws of that era.
Trump’s first executive order, issued on the opening day of his second term, challenged that traditional reading directly. It would have denied citizenship documentation to many U.S.-born children whose parents lacked permanent legal status, including children of undocumented parents and people in the country temporarily on student, tourist, or work visas.
Every federal court that considered the policy ruled against it, and the Supreme Court ultimately invalidated it in Trump v. Barbara. According to the Court’s June 30 decision, the Constitution protects citizenship for children born in the United States of parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present, rejecting the administration’s expansive interpretation of the jurisdiction clause.
The administration’s new orders therefore represent an effort to test the boundaries left open by that ruling, rather than a direct repeat of the earlier policy.
Legal challenges expected
Immigrant-rights groups immediately signaled that they view the new orders as constitutionally suspect. Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the Supreme Court had already resolved the fundamental question. “Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution,” he said. “No additional executive order can change the meaning of the Constitution.”
The likely legal challenge will center on whether the categories identified by the administration truly fall outside U.S. jurisdiction. Children of accredited foreign diplomats present the clearest historical exception. But applying similar logic to alleged terrorist affiliations, foreign-government lobbying, surrogacy arrangements or visa-related accusations may require courts to decide whether the executive branch can effectively create new exclusions from a constitutional guarantee.
The administration also could face due-process challenges if families are denied passports, Social Security numbers or other citizenship documents based on unproven allegations about a parent’s conduct or intent. Immigration lawyers say any system that makes citizenship turn on a government assessment of a parent’s motives would be vulnerable to factual disputes and inconsistent enforcement.
What happens next
The first immediate test will be whether the federal agencies issue detailed implementation guidance. The State Department would need to explain how consular officers should identify birth-tourism cases, while DHS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would need to specify how they will treat citizenship-document applications involving the newly targeted categories.
The second test will come in court. Trump’s earlier order was blocked rapidly, and advocacy groups have indicated they are prepared to challenge the new directives as soon as implementation affects families.
For Trump, the orders preserve a politically resonant immigration issue after his broader plan failed at the Supreme Court. For opponents, they represent a renewed attempt to use executive power to narrow a constitutional promise that has defined American citizenship for generations. Whether the narrower strategy survives will depend not on the White House’s rhetoric, but on whether judges conclude its new categories are grounded in established constitutional exceptions, or amount to another effort to rewrite birthright citizenship by decree.