President Trump vowed “big crackdowns” on birth tourism on Thursday after he signed two executive orders placing new restrictions on birthright citizenship and banning birth tourism.
This comes after the Supreme Court ruled last month to strike down President Trump’s January 2025 executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of temporary tourists and people who are in the country illegally.
Trump’s new executive orders target those intentionally traveling to the US for the sole purpose of having a child and use the Supreme Court’s ruling to “expand the definitions of people who are ineligible for birthright citizenship,” Stephen Miller said.
“We’re cracking down very big. Very big. Big crackdowns,” Trump told reporters after signing his new orders.
“And this will give us the right to do it in a much more forceful manner. But they’ve taken birthright citizenship, and they’ve made a joke out of it, and we’re actually the only country of size, I think, just about the only country period that does birthright citizenship.”
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The President further decried the Supreme Court’s ruling as “a bad decision, very unfair decision,” adding, “Our country suffers because of it, and we’re ending it a different way.”
Trump was then asked for an estimate on the number of people abusing birthright citizenship and obtaining fraudulent visas for birth tourism, and he said it’s “hundreds of thousands.”
“One man came in with a family, had said he had 56 children. Another one came in, they said they had 98 children. This is not what it was for. This was meant for the babies of slaves. It was. It was right after one week or two weeks after the Civil War ended,” Trump said. “This wasn’t for wealthy multi-millionaires, billionaires coming in and bringing 15, 20, 30 children along with them. It’s become a big business, and we’re ending that business.”
White House Staff Secretary Will Scharff explained the legal authority of the order, noting that “What we’ve seen in recent years, though, is organized rings, at times criminal rings, setting up a system whereby tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people can come to this country in an organized fashion and give birth here purely for the sake of obtaining birthright citizenship.”
“This order takes a number of different actions intended to combat those sorts of organized practices. We look very heavily at denying visas to people that we have reason to believe are coming here for that purpose, visas both for putative parents, but also for the people organizing these rings,” he said. “What we’re doing is taking legally validated means that are clearly within our disposal and targeting them square on to this birth tourism industry. There’s absolutely nothing in here that runs afoul of any of the Supreme Court’s opinions on the subject.”
Trump added, “This should have been done a long time ago. This should have happened years ago, but we’re taking care of it now.”
Stephen Miller also spoke on the enforcement of the order, telling reporters that 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a “very rarely used” law, gives the government the power to restrict immigration.
Section 215(a) allows the President to prescribe rules and regulations for aliens entering the United States and makes it illegal for aliens to “make any false statement in an application for permission to depart from or enter the United States.”
“If you’re telling a consular officer you’re here as a tourist, but your true purpose and intent is to go to a baby mill, give birth, and try to mint an American citizen while you’re here, then you’re committing a fraud against the American government. And by definition, that visa can and should and will be now denied,” Miller said.
Trump signed the executive orders in the Oval Office on Thursday, expanding limitations on birthright citizenship and banning birth tourism completely.
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