President Donald Trump is charting a new course on one of his key obsessions after being humiliated by the Supreme Court.
Controlling birthright citizenship has been one of Trump’s biggest priorities as part of the MAGA crackdown on immigration.
On Thursday, Trump, 80, signed two executive orders that would put limits on birthright citizenship after SCOTUS ruled in June that his previous efforts on the issue were unconstitutional.
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said Trump’s prior executive order to end birthright citizenship for all children born on U.S. soil violated the 14th Amendment. He issued the executive order on his first day in office in 2025.
After the brutal loss, Trump has vowed to find a new path to bypass the long-standing constitutional right.
His first new executive order said children would be ineligible for citizenship if they were born to an “alien enemy” such as members of foreign terrorist organizations, or children of foreign lobbyists.
The second order said children of people who fraudulently request tourist visas for the purpose of giving birth in the U.S. would not automatically become citizens.
The Constitution’s 14th Amendment has long been interpreted as guaranteeing citizenship for all babies born in the U.S., with only narrow exceptions such as the children of foreign diplomats or members of an enemy occupying force.
Trump defended his new orders on Thursday, after signing them accompanied by White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller.
“People are building businesses around it,” Trump said. “Wealthy people are building businesses around birthright citizenship. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. It’s a disgrace. They’re buying their way in, and we’re not going to let it happen.”
The president claimed there were “hundreds of thousands” of people attempting to have children in the U.S., claiming two examples of unnamed individuals who came to the U.S. and had 56 and 98 children respectively.
He said the 14th Amendment was “meant for the babies of slaves, it was... right after... the Civil War ended. This wasn’t for wealthy multi-millionaires, billionaires coming in and bringing 15, 20, 30 children along with them.”
There are roughly 3.5 million births in the U.S. each year. The Migration Policy Institute claimed in April that an estimated 26,000 may fall into the “birth tourism” category.
Trump also slammed the original Supreme Court ruling, saying it was a “ bad decision, very unfair decision.”
He told reporters in the Oval Office, “Our country suffers because of it, and we’re ending it a different way.”
When asked if his new order will pass the Supreme Court, Trump said, “I think it will.”
Both of Trump’s new orders are expected to be challenged in court.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully challenged Trump’s first attempt to limit birthright citizenship, condemned the president’s new orders.
“The Supreme Court already decided this issue: Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution,” Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Wofsy served as lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case.
“No additional executive order can change the meaning of the Constitution. Any executive order that tries to rewrite birthright citizenship will meet the same fate as the last one,” he said.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the ACLU for comment.
