Trump again tries to restrict birthright citizenship after Supreme Court
ruling
[August 07, 2026]
By WILL WEISSERT and REBECCA SANTANA
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is once
more trying to limit the number of people who are born in the country
who can become American citizens, in a sign that even after his first
attempt at limiting birthright citizenship was rejected by the Supreme
Court, he's ready to try again.
The president said he was signing two executive actions on immigration,
including one limiting the number of people eligible for U.S.
citizenship after being born in the United States, while another focused
on stopping people from coming to the U.S. to give birth.
The written executive order released later Thursday was narrower in
scope than the previous one shot down by the Supreme Court and appeared
to focus on restricting automatic citizenship to specific categories of
people, including children born to adults with connections to foreign
embassies or organizations as well as anyone considered an “alien enemy”
of the United States.
It also aimed to restrict birthright citizenship to anyone whose parents
“engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship."
A second order seeks to curb what Trump called “birth tourism” by
increasing restrictions on visitors to the U.S. who want to obtain visas
to give birth while in the country.
It was not immediately clear how successful the president's most recent
attempt to restrict birthright citizenship would be. Trump said he
thought his latest actions would be constitutional and his drive to
reopen the question reflected the administration's zeal to restrict who
gets to become an American.
“I thought we were going to win it at the Supreme Court. Unfortunately,
we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because
of it and we’re ending it a different way,” Trump said.
The Migration Policy Institute noted in a 2026 article that it’s already
considered fraud and grounds to restrict a visa if someone seeks a visa
specifically to come to the U.S. and obtain citizenship for a child.
Previous administrations have also sought to prosecute so-called “birth
tourism" schemes that helped women hide their pregnancies while
traveling to the United States to give birth.
Birthright citizenship has become a key rallying point in the
president’s second term anti-immigration agenda, with the president and
supporters arguing it makes the country a magnet for immigration and
that American citizenship should be reserved for those who truly value
it, as opposed to just being given to anyone born here.
But immigration advocates and many legal experts say that the
Constitution is clear in outlining who is considered a citizen. They've
also argued that birthright citizenship is a benefit to the U.S. by
giving everyone an equal stake in the country's future and that
restricting who can become a citizen would create a second-class of
people in America.
[to top of second column]
|
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House,
Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The Trump administration has painted birth tourism as a widespread
problem. There's no official estimate of how many births can be
considered “birth tourism” births, but an estimated 26,000 might
fall into that category out of the roughly 3.5 million births in the
U.S. every year, MPI wrote in its 2026 article.
In June, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s previous efforts to
declare that children born to people in the U.S. illegally or
temporarily aren’t American citizens, and upheld a broad conception
of birthright citizenship.
The American Civil Liberties Union predicted that Trump's second
attempt would also be rejected.
“The Supreme Court already decided this issue: Birthright
citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution. 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,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy
director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, in a statement
Thursday.
On Trump’s first day in office of his second term, he signed an
executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship, which allows
anyone born in the United States to automatically become an American
citizen.
Trump’s administration was immediately sued by opponents who said
the executive order went against the 14th Amendment, adopted after
the Civil War, which makes anyone born in the country a citizen,
with very limited exceptions.
The executive order was blocked by several lower courts and never
took effect.
In June, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s order by a 6-3 vote.
But the vote was too close for many immigration advocates and legal
observers who felt the legal question of birthright citizenship was
a long-settled issue.
When it came to the legal question of whether birthright citizenship
was protected by the Constitution, the vote was even narrower. Only
five justices said it was enshrined in the Constitution, while
Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected the executive order, but did so
specifically on the grounds that federal law conveys birthright
citizenship.
__
Santana reported from Sacramento.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
