Two executive orders headed for President Trump's signature Thursday would deny U.S. citizenship to children born in the United States through the commercial birth-tourism industry. The administration frames this as a permissible fraud exception to the 14th Amendment. The risk is that courts, fresh off blocking Trump's broader Inauguration Day citizenship order on June 30, find this second attempt equally exposed.
What the orders target
The first order covers four categories of births. Children of foreign diplomatic staff occupy the most legally settled ground: the 14th Amendment already excludes ambassadors' families, and this order extends that carve-out to a broader class of noncitizen embassy employees. Children of those designated as alien enemies, including members of federally declared terrorist groups, would be excluded by analogy to the amendment's existing carve-out for invading armies. A third provision covers births in U.S. territories, though only if Congress first changes existing law. A bill was introduced last month and is not expected to pass.
The fourth category is the novel one. The order targets mothers who, in the administration's telling, deceptively enter the United States for the sole purpose of delivering at a birth-tourism center. Officials say this falls under the government's existing authority to revoke citizenship obtained through fraudulent naturalization, extended here to cover entering the country under false pretenses.
The second order directs the secretary of state and the Department of Homeland Security secretary to issue rules targeting the birth-tourism industry at home and abroad.
The scale and the investigations
The size of the birth-tourism population is genuinely uncertain. Estimates range from the low thousands to the tens of thousands of children born through these arrangements. The House Oversight Committee requested documents in May from a Miami-based company called "Have My Baby in Miami," citing concerns that the industry, because clients come predominantly from China and Russia, poses national security and election integrity risks. The Senate Homeland Security Committee published its own report on the practice in 2022.
Trump addressed the politics directly on March 30, writing on Truth Social that birthright citizenship was never meant for wealthy foreign nationals paying to give birth in the United States.
The counterargument
The counterargument deserves its due. Amanda Frost, an immigration law professor at the University of Virginia, told PolitiFact that existing law already bars tourist visas when the primary purpose is to deliver a child here, and immigration officers can already deny entry to a foreign national they determine is arriving to give birth. Her position: enforce existing regulations rather than issue new orders. The June 30 Supreme Court ruling, which blocked the Inauguration Day order, compounds the legal exposure. The administration contends that ruling still preserves room for narrower exceptions; courts will settle that question.
On balance
On balance, the case for these orders rests on a fraud doctrine extension no court has yet blessed in this context. Birth tourism is not legally protected. The constitutional route to restricting it, however, remains genuinely contested. The line to watch is whether federal courts read the June 30 ruling as permitting narrow categorical exclusions, or as foreclosing broader executive action on birthright citizenship.