Trump takes new steps to limit US birthright citizenship

US President Donald Trump is trying again to scale back birthright citizenship in the US, weeks after the Supreme Court shot down his previous attempt to eliminate the right, the BBC writes.

Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday, including one that expands the existing definitions of non-citizens whose children are not eligible for birthright citizenship.

The second order bans so-called birth tourism, the practice of pregnant mothers coming to the US to give birth so that their babies will be citizens.

“This should have happened years ago, but we’re taking care of it now,” Trump said from the Oval Office, criticizing the Supreme Court’s rejection of his previous bid to end the 150-year-old policy.

That first executive order prohibits the automatic citizenship of babies born in the United States to two non-citizen parents where one of the parents is: a member of a foreign terrorist group, a foreign government employee, has attempted to gain citizenship through fraudulent means, or is living in US territories where citizenship is not conferred by federal statute.

The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, has said that the most expansive census-based estimate accounts for about 22,000 to 26,000 babies born in the US from birth tourism every year. Government data, according to the institute, showed that there were 9,600 births to mothers with foreign addresses in 2024.