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U.S. President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday in a new but narrower attempt to curtail birthright citizenship, once again challenging a provision of the U.S. Constitution even though the Supreme Court rejected his previous effort, Reuters reports.
Limiting birthright citizenship has been one of the top priorities in the Republican president's crackdown on immigration, with the White House taking particular aim at what it calls "birth tourism," in which pregnant foreigners travel to the U.S. to give birth.
After his June 30 setback in the Supreme Court, Trump called on Congress to act, but on Thursday he opted for executive orders, which set policy but do not carry the same weight as laws passed by Congress.
The Supreme Court had struck down as unconstitutional Trump's earlier executive order, which targeted a wide swath of immigrants in the country illegally or temporarily.
The administration argues the new directive falls outside the purview of the Supreme Court ruling, as it seeks to reinterpret the narrow, historical exceptions to citizenship at birth and expand who is ineligible.
"That practice of birth tourism is, as of the signing of this order, hereby banned," White House aide Stephen Miller said at the Thursday signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports lower levels of immigration, estimated in an analysis in 2020 that between 20,000 and 25,000 mothers came to the U.S. for birth tourism in a year-long period between 2016 and 2017.
There were 3.6 million births in the U.S. in 2025.
The executive orders also limit the rights of children born to foreign government employees in the U.S. and children of people who are classified as alien enemies.
The orders could also affect people born in U.S. territories, should Congress enact a proposed law to end automatic citizenship there.