US President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday (Aug 7) in a new but narrower attempt to curtail birthright citizenship, once again challenging a provision of the US Constitution even though the Supreme Court rejected his previous effort.
Limiting birthright citizenship has been one of the top priorities in the Republican president’s crackdown on immigration, with the White House taking particular aim at what it calls “birth tourism”, in which pregnant foreigners travel to the US to give birth.
After his Jun 30 setback in the Supreme Court, Trump called on Congress to act, but on Thursday he opted for executive orders, which set policy but do not carry the same weight as laws passed by Congress.
The Supreme Court had struck down as unconstitutional Trump’s earlier executive order, which targeted a wide swath of immigrants in the country illegally or temporarily. The administration argues the new directive falls outside the purview of the Supreme Court ruling, as it seeks to reinterpret the narrow, historical exceptions to citizenship at birth and expand who is ineligible.
“That practice of birth tourism is, as of the signing of this order, hereby banned,” White House aide Stephen Miller said at the Thursday signing ceremony in the Oval Office. The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports lower levels of immigration, estimated in an analysis in 2020 that between 20,000 and 25,000 mothers came to the U.S. for birth tourism in a year-long period between 2016 and 2017.
There were 3.6 million births in the US in 2025.
The executive orders also limit the rights of children born to foreign government employees in the US and children of people who are classified as alien enemies.
The orders could also affect people born in US territories, should Congress enact a proposed law to end automatic citizenship there. Trump’s new orders are likely to face legal challenge.
Legal experts said it was unclear what effect the executive orders might have given the Supreme Court ruling, while immigrant advocates called it an attempt to evade the high court’s decision. The ACLU predicted it was doomed to fail in court.
“Just five weeks ago, the Supreme Court made clear that birthright citizenship is not subject to a president’s whims, it is a constitutional guarantee that has stood for more than 150 years.
Today’s executive orders are nothing more than an attempt to get around that ruling,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a former Biden administration official who is now with UnidosUS, a Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organisation.
Zain Lakhani of the Women’s Refugee Commission said the executive orders could trample the rights of pregnant women seeking lawful entry “in one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives”, and called on the government to establish guidelines honouring the Supreme Court ruling.
