Trump signs new orders limiting birthright citizenship weeks after Supreme Court loss News
Photo: @victorqiuphoto / Instagram
Trump signs new orders limiting birthright citizenship weeks after Supreme Court loss

US President Donald Trump signed two executive orders Thursday directing federal agencies to withhold citizenship from certain children born on US soil, reviving a policy the Supreme Court rejected five weeks earlier and setting up a fresh test of how far a president may narrow a constitutional guarantee by decree.

The orders follow the court’s June 30 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, which held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, granting citizenship to anyone “born…in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” covers children of parents present in the country unlawfully or temporarily. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said such children “are citizens at birth.”

The first of Trump’s new orders, “Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” instructs agencies not to issue documents recognizing citizenship for children born to two noncitizen parents in any of four scenarios:

  1. Where a parent is an “alien enemy,” defined to include members of designated foreign terrorist organizations under 8 U.S.C. § 1189 and specially designated global terrorists;
  2. where a parent is a foreign government employee, including embassy and consular staff who are nationals of that country and employees of international organizations holding immunity;
  3. where a parent entered a commercial transaction to obtain citizenship for the child, including surrogacy arrangements; and
  4. where the child is born in a US territory or territorial waters in which no federal statute confers citizenship.

The second order, “Ending Birth Tourism,” delegates the president’s authority under Section 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to the heads of the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security, and directs them to deny visas, revoke travel authorization, bar entry, and remove foreign nationals who travel to the US to give birth. It defines birth tourism as entry on a nonimmigrant visa “for the purpose of giving birth on American soil,” or facilitating such entry. The order grants exemptions on humanitarian grounds, as well as in cases where the foreign parents’ entry is considered to be in the “national interest.”

A White House fact sheet said the orders identify categories the Supreme Court itself recognized as historical exceptions, citing the Barbara majority’s statement that citizenship extends to children of parents “for whom no extraterritorial fiction applie[s].”