Trump attacks birthright citizenship (again) – Part 1

On Aug. 6, 2026, Pres. Donald Trump signed two executive orders, seeking to limit birthright/automatic citizenship for children born in the US, after the US Supreme Court struck down a previous executive order on birthright citizenship as unconstitutional.

These new executive orders deal with:

• “Ending birth tourism” and

• “Continuing to protect the meaning and value of American citizenship.”

In this article, I will discuss the executive order on ending birth tourism. In a future article, I will discuss the other executive order on continuing to protect the meaning and value of American citizenship.

The executive order on ending birth tourism is nothing new. It adds nothing to existing policy and may simply be his attempt to satisfy his base that he is still trying to do something on birthright citizenship.

The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) already has rules and regulations on traveling to the US in order to give birth. The FAM notes that traveling to the US on a visitor visa “does not include travel for the primary purpose of obtaining US citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States.” If a consul has reason to believe a woman will give birth in the US, then her visa should be refused, unless the woman can demonstrate that she has a “different and permissible primary purpose of travel” to the US other than giving birth, such as medical care, visiting a dying relative, etc. In other words, there are already “on the books” prohibitions on birth tourism. So why is this executive order necessary?

The executive order on birth tourism has strong rhetoric that “citizenship is not a commodity to be acquired through calculated exploitation and evasion of the immigration laws, such as by entering the United States on a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth within the Nation’s borders.” The executive order criticizes birth tourism operators who arrange travel to the US for expectant mothers in order to give birth.

The birth tourism executive order effectively delegates to the secretary of State and the secretary of Homeland Security to “issue or adopt rules, policies, operational guidance or other guidance to carry out this order.” But, as noted above, there are already rules, policies and operational guidance in place on birth tourism, so this particular executive order is nothing new.

But the bottom line is that if a woman is pregnant, she may have difficulty in either obtaining a visitor visa or, upon arrival in the US, the US Department of Homeland Security may believe she’s coming to give birth and could perhaps send her “airport to airport.” But this executive order shows Trump is not giving up on trying to attack or limit citizenship for children born in the US to visitors, other non-immigrants or those who are out of status, despite the Supreme Court’s rulings.

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