Trump issues new executive orders targeting birthright citizenship, birth tourism, surrogacy

The Trump administration issued a pair of executive orders Thursday that attempt to restrict who can receive automatic U.S. birthright citizenship, marking a renewed push after the Supreme Court struck down a previous attempt in June.

The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, with narrow exceptions. The new executive orders attempt to expand those exceptions by targeting specific categories: children born to foreign diplomatic officers (which U.S. immigration law already excludes), babies born through "birth tourism," and children of anyone working at foreign embassies, representing foreign governments, or employed by the United Nations or other international organizations. The orders also exclude children of parents deemed to be members of designated terrorist organizations or deemed "alien enemies."

The orders are narrower in scope than the Supreme Court rejected in June, Trump said, but legal challenges are still expected.

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University, raised concerns about enforcement. "How is the federal government going to decide that a child is born to a member of a designated terrorist organization? These are not organizations that are sharing the membership lists if they even have them." He also noted that neither the 14th Amendment nor Supreme Court precedent addresses surrogacy, which some Republican lawmakers have sought to restrict. The executive order on surrogacy could raise new legal questions, he said.

The White House defines birth tourism as someone entering the U.S. on a nonimmigrant visa specifically to give birth and obtain citizenship for a child—already considered visa fraud under existing law.