US President Donald Trump plans to sign two executive orders aimed at denying citizenship to children born in the United States as a result of commercial “birth tourism”, according to Axios, marking his latest attempt to curb a constitutional guarantee that has already survived one legal challenge from his administration this year.
Trump is also seeking to deny birthright citizenship to children born to some foreign diplomatic staff present in the country, and potentially to those born in US territories in future, Axios reported. A White House official confirmed on Thursday that the orders would also target children born to members of federally designated terrorist groups, according to NBC News. Trump’s official schedule listed a “signing time” event at the Oval Office on Thursday, though the signing had not taken place as of 4:05 pm, roughly an hour and five minutes behind its scheduled slot, according to Reuters.
Birthright Citizenship: Why Is Trump Targeting Birthright Citizenship Again?
Limiting birthright citizenship has remained one of the central priorities in Trump’s wider immigration crackdown since his return to office. An earlier, more sweeping executive order seeking to deny citizenship to children born in the US without at least one citizen or permanent resident parent was rejected by the Supreme Court in June, prompting Trump to instead call on Congress to legislate the change.
Thursday’s orders represent a narrower approach, targeting specific categories the administration argues fall outside the intended scope of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee, which states that all persons born or naturalised in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens.
Birthright Citizenship: What Exactly Is ‘Birth Tourism’, And How Common Is It?
Birth tourism refers to the practice of travelling to the United States for the specific purpose of giving birth so that the child automatically acquires US citizenship. No American law explicitly bans the practice outright, though a federal regulation introduced during Trump’s first term in 2020 already prohibits using temporary tourist and business visas for the primary purpose of securing citizenship for a newborn, with violators potentially facing prosecution for fraud or related offences.
No official government figures are tracking exactly how many foreign nationals travel to the US each year for this purpose, or what it costs taxpayers. The Centre for Immigration Studies, a group that supports lower immigration levels, estimated in a 2020 analysis that between 20,000 and 25,000 mothers came to the US for birth tourism during one year spanning 2016 and 2017, out of roughly 3.6 million total births recorded in the country in 2025.
Birthright Citizenship: What Legal Hurdles Could The New Orders Face?
Given the Supreme Court’s rejection of Trump’s earlier, broader attempt to curtail birthright citizenship, legal scholars are likely to scrutinise closely whether these more narrowly tailored orders can withstand similar constitutional challenges. Michael Anton, a former national security adviser to Trump, has previously argued that the 14th Amendment’s language leaves room for interpretation regarding who falls under US jurisdiction for citizenship purposes, a reading that remains disputed by many constitutional scholars who maintain that altering the birthright citizenship guarantee would require a formal constitutional amendment rather than executive action.
With the signing event still pending as of Thursday afternoon, opponents of the move are expected to mount fresh legal challenges once the orders are formally issued, continuing a pattern of litigation that has accompanied nearly every major immigration policy shift since Trump returned to the White House.
