Trump issues narrower birthright-citizenship and “birth tourism” orders

One order denies federal recognition to four categories of future U.S.-born children; the other targets visas and operators tied to travel for childbirth.

The first order tells federal agencies not to recognize citizenship for future U.S.-born children when neither parent is a citizen and a parent is an “alien enemy,” certain foreign-government or international-organization employee, involved in a commercial transaction to obtain birthright citizenship, or the child is born in a territory where federal law does not confer citizenship. A second order directs State and Homeland Security to deny, revoke or restrict visas and target businesses that facilitate travel to give birth.

ContextWhat changed after the Supreme Court loss? Trump’s 2025 order broadly denied automatic citizenship when a mother was undocumented or temporarily present and the father was neither a citizen nor permanent resident. The Supreme Court rejected that approach in June 2026. The new orders use narrower categories and immigration-enforcement powers, but they still assert executive authority over citizenship rules and are likely to face new constitutional and statutory challenges. Existing law already excludes children of accredited foreign diplomats; the new order attempts to extend that logic to much broader classes of foreign employees and designated enemies. How unusual is the U.S. rule among peer countries? Among the G7, only the United States and Canada provide generally automatic citizenship by birthplace. Pew’s 2026 GLOBALCIT analysis classifies Germany as conditional on a parent’s legal residence and France as limited by parentage rules; the United Kingdom also requires a citizen or settled parent. Italy and Japan do not recognize general birthright citizenship. Globally, Pew counted 33 countries with generally automatic birthright citizenship, concentrated in the Americas. The comparison explains why the U.S. is unusual among wealthy democracies; it does not answer whether a president can change a constitutional and statutory rule without Congress.