Newsman: President Trump further has signed a pair of executive orders targeting birthright citizenship. On Thursday, the president signed two executive orders, this time taking a more narrow focus on so-called “birth tourism. “These executive orders targeting birthright citizenship — one that would outlaw what the administration has described as “birth tourism” and another that would narrow the criteria that who is eligible for birthright citizenship.
President Trump said that “hundreds of thousands” of people are taking advantage of birth tourism. However, his own Solicitor General John Sauer had a very different response to that question in April, when Supreme Court Justice John Roberts pressed him about the practice during oral arguments around Trump’s Day 1 executive order, saying that “No one knows for sure.”
The first order aims to exclude babies born to members of foreign terrorist groups or employees working for foreign governments, such as ambassadors.
The second order removes automatic citizenship for babies whose parents engaged in “birth tourism.” This is an issue that Trump has raised for years, and the term refers to when pregnant foreigners visit the U.S. in order to give birth, so that their newborn can obtain American citizenship.
Trump again criticized the Supreme Court’s June decision to uphold birthright citizenship, saying Thursday’s actions are “adjustments” because of the high court’s refusal to greenlight his executive order.
“We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright. It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision. So we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair,” Trump said.
The birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court just five weeks ago.
Asked what makes him confident this will hold up to constitutional law, Trump deferred to White House Secretary Will Scharf, but said, “I think it will.”
The orders come as an attempt by Trump to do away with birthright citizenship altogether in an executive order he signed on the first day of his second term last year.
Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller was at the Oval Office when the executive orders were announced, calling the crackdown on the practice one of the most important actions that Trump has taken when it comes to immigration.
“It ends what has been one of the gravest and most egregious abuses of the American system, and it keeps American citizenship sacred,” he said.
Asked how the government would distinguish between a “a tourist and a birth tourist,” Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, said, “The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president this authority, citing section 215(a) of the law which, in part, makes it unlawful for any noncitizen to enter or leave the U.S. “except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and order. … The President may prescribe.”
“If you’re telling a consular officer you’re here as a tourist, but your true purpose and intent is to go to a baby mill, give birth and try to mint an American citizen while you’re here and you’re committing a fraud against the American government,” Miller said.
“So that practice of birth tourism is, as of the signing of this order, hereby banned. And what that means is that no one in the world is any more allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose,” Miller said.
Sauer cited “media reports” that said estimates are more than 1.1 million, “or 1.5 million from the People’s Republic of China alone.”
“The congressional report that we cite in our brief talks about certain hotspots, like Russian elites coming to Miami through these birth tourism companies,” Sauer said.
In the other order, Miller said people who would be ineligible to obtain citizenship by birthright, would include “alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments.”
“This is a situation where you would hope that the Supreme Court would step in very quickly to enforce its prior decision,” he said.
The Center for Immigration Studies — a group that supports restricting immigration — estimates that temporary visitors gave birth to about 70,000 babies in 2023.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in 2024, fewer than 10,000 babies were born in the U.S. to foreign residents.
Both estimates suggest that tourist births make up a small fraction of the 3.6 million babies born in the U.S. every year.
Over the years, there have been some crackdowns on covert, lucrative businesses coaching travelers on how to conceal their pregnancies from immigration authorities. But the actual scale of the practice is unclear.
