Trump signed new executive orders restricting birthright citizenship in the US: what’s changing

US President Donald Trump has signed two new executive orders aimed at restricting the automatic acquisition of US citizenship by birth. This decision was made after the US Supreme Court did not support the administration’s previous attempt to narrow the scope of this constitutional guarantee.

This is reported by The Guardian.

“The Supreme Court’s decision was made by a narrow margin, but it is a very, very unfortunate decision. So we are making adjustments, because it is very unfair,” Donald Trump told reporters.

Who will be affected by the new restrictions

The first order expands the list of categories of children who, in the opinion of the presidential administration, should not automatically receive US citizenship by birth.

In particular, the document concerns:

children of persons whom the US administration considers members of foreign terrorist organizations;

children of certain representatives of foreign governments;

a wider range of civil servants of other countries, to whom it is proposed to extend the exceptions that previously applied mainly to diplomats;

children born in certain US territories, where automatic acquisition of citizenship, according to the administration, is not provided for by federal law;
children of persons who, according to the federal authorities, obtained American citizenship through fraud.
A separate decree against “birth tourism”

The second decree is aimed at combating the so-called “birth tourism” — the practice when foreigners come to the US specifically to give birth to a child who automatically acquires American citizenship.

The document instructs federal authorities to strengthen control over the organizers of such trips and intensify the fight against schemes for their organization.

At the same time, American law already provides for liability for obtaining a tourist visa by submitting false information for the purpose of giving birth to a child in the US.

Data on the scale of the phenomenon

President Trump stated that “birth tourism” has become a significant scale and has become a separate business, but he did not provide public evidence to support these claims.

At the same time, according to estimates by the US Migration Policy Institute, from 22 to 26 thousand children are born in the country every year as part of this practice.

Official statistics for 2024 indicate about 9,600 births to mothers permanently residing outside the United States. This is less than 1% of the total number of births in the country.

New orders may again end up in the courts

It is expected that the new executive orders will also be challenged in American courts.

At the end of June, the US Supreme Court already left in force the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees citizenship to almost all persons born in the country. The court ruled unconstitutional a previous attempt by the Trump administration to strip children born to parents who were in the United States illegally or on temporary visas of their automatic citizenship.

In 2025, the Trump administration had already attempted to limit the principle of birthright citizenship through an executive order, but its implementation was blocked by lower courts. The Supreme Court later upheld the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, effectively leaving the principle of automatic birthright citizenship unchanged.

Now the US administration is proposing new approaches to narrowing the circle of people covered by this constitutional guarantee. At the same time, the final assessment of the legality of the new orders will likely be provided again by federal courts.