President Trump signed an executive order Thursday forbidding foreign women from obtaining visas to enter the U.S. for the purpose of giving birth to a child — so-called “birth tourism” — as he tried to close one of the avenues of birthright citizenship left open by the Supreme Court’s ruling in June.
Mr. Trump signed another order declaring children born to members of foreign terrorist organizations and people who act on behalf of foreign governments ineligible for citizenship.
In both cases, the White House said they are trying to use some of the openings created by the justices’ recent ruling.
“We’re making adjustments,” Mr. Trump said in the Oval Office.
Mr. Trump last year attempted a much broader attack on birthright citizenship, using an executive order to try to deny it to children born on U.S. soil to illegal immigrant and temporary visitor parents.
The Supreme Court ruled against him, finding that the 14th Amendment guarantees automatic citizenship to children born to both of those categories.
The justices said there are few exceptions to that, including children born to foreign diplomats and occupying forces, and the children born to those working for a foreign government would expand the exception for diplomats.
Mr. Trump’s new orders attempt to find wiggle room there.
The order relating to terrorist organizations would treat them as similar to an occupying force
The order on birth tourism, meanwhile, tries to block some pregnant foreign women from reaching the U.S. in the first place.
The orders do nothing to affect children born to illegal immigrants and temporary visitors already here in the U.S.
The Pew Research Center said that in 2023 some 245,000 children were born to illegal immigrant mothers.
Pew said birth tourism — children born to women who came on legal visas specifically to deliver — accounted for just 9,000 cases.
Despite those low numbers, the practice has galled Republicans who say it’s an abuse of the generous American immigration system.
While some women enter the U.S. on their own to give birth, particularly across the southern border, others pay tens of thousands of dollars to companies that exist specifically to facilitate birth tourism.
One case, which the Justice Department prosecuted, involved what authorities described as a “maternity house” in Rancho Cucamonga, California. USA Happy Baby Inc. rented apartments to pregnant Chinese women who would give birth, then return to China a month or two later.
The operators coached the women on how to avoid scrutiny in their travel visa applications by claiming they were engaged in tourism and would only be here for days or weeks — not the months they really intended to stay.
They were also coached to hide their pregnancies from border officers by wearing loose clothing and to understate how far along they were if the pregnancy was noticed. They were also told to select customs lines manned by older white officers, who were thought to give less scrutiny to the women.
Happy Baby charged up to $100,000 for VIP clients.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said the new order bans birth tourism altogether.
“No one in the world is any more allowed to obtain a visa for this fraudulent purpose,” he said, standing alongside Mr. Trump.
The trick will be to try to spot those cases where women are coming for the purpose of giving birth.
The first Trump administration issued guidance to immigration officers to look for such cases and try to deny them, but the Pew numbers show thousands still managed to enter.
Mr. Trump called his new executive orders a “big deal,” and continued to criticize the justices for their ruling.
“A very, very unfortunate decision,” he said.
He said the 14th Amendment, which includes the grant of birthright citizenship, was intended to help newly freed slaves and should not have applied to immigrants.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. disagreed, saying the concept of citizenship tied to place of birth dates back to English common law.
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