The Trump administration issued two executive orders on Thursday that place new restrictions on birthright citizenship and on foreign nationals who give birth in the United States, reviving an effort that the Supreme Court struck down in June.

President Donald Trump said the new orders contain "adjustments" that take the Supreme Court's June decision into account. The White House itself expects some of the restrictions to face legal challenges.

The orders arrive after a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year rejected a previous attempt to restrict birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, with limited exceptions already recognized under U.S. immigration law.

Who the new orders affect

The order released Thursday is narrower in scope than the version the Supreme Court struck down. It targets specific categories of births rather than citizenship policy as a whole.

One order disqualifies babies who are the product of "birth tourism," which the order defines as entering the United States on a "nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on American soil."

The other order applies to children of anyone working in a foreign embassy or representing a foreign government, as well as employees of the United Nations or other international organizations. It also excludes children of parents tied to groups the administration deems terrorist organizations, such as Antifa or Tren de Aragua, and children of "alien enemies" of the United States.

Current law already withholds birthright citizenship from babies born to a "foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States" — a category that includes ambassadors, ministers, chargés d'affaires, counselors, secretaries and attachés of embassies and legations, and members of the Delegation of the Commission of the European Communities. The new orders would sharply expand those exemptions.

The order also addresses surrogacy, an area Republican members of Congress have targeted this year with a bill that would restrict citizenship for children of noncitizen parents born to surrogates in the United States.

"Neither the 14th Amendment nor any of the Supreme Court's decisions about how to interpret the 14th Amendment mentions or hints at surrogates," said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University.

How enforcement would change

Birth tourism is already considered fraud and can serve as grounds to deny a visa if an applicant seeks one specifically to obtain citizenship for a child. Advocates say the new order would give immigration officers discretion to deny entry to pregnant women suspected of wanting to give birth in the United States, without clearly defined guidelines.

The order also targets what it calls "birth tourism operators." It states that such operators "use deceptive advertisements and inducements to entice foreign nationals to travel to the United States for the purpose of giving birth on American soil," promising citizenship, access to public benefits and short-term stays in specialized facilities, hotels or rentals.

The order does not provide evidence of how widespread these operators are. Previous administrations have also prosecuted birth tourism schemes that helped women hide pregnancies while traveling to the United States.

In late July, the Texas attorney general's office announced a "sweeping investigation" into potentially unlawful birth tourism schemes after some south Texas hospitals advertised birthing services in Mexico.

The numbers

Trump offered no data on Thursday but said the scale of the problem runs to "hundreds of thousands, OK? Hundreds of thousands."

No official estimate of birth tourism exists. Experts call the president's figure exaggerated.

"The hundreds of thousands just seems like an overestimate based on the sort of limited data that we have available," said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that in 2024, nearly 9,600 children were born to foreign mothers with an official address outside the country. The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for lower immigration, estimates that 20,000 to 26,000 birth tourists come to the United States each year.

Legal questions ahead

Asked how the orders would survive Supreme Court scrutiny, Trump deferred to White House staff secretary Will Scharf, who emphasized consular discretion to grant visas.

"What we're doing is taking legally validated means that are clearly within our disposal and targeting them to this birth tourism industry. There's absolutely nothing here that runs afoul of any of the Supreme Court rulings on the subject," Scharf said.

Critics say the Constitution will again stop the administration's efforts.

"The bottom line is that the Supreme Court already considered the Trump administration's plea to rewrite the Constitution and rejected it," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director at the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project. "Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, and no amount of executive orders is going to change that."

Travelers and expectant parents affected by the new measures should monitor announcements from the White House, the Department of State and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for implementation details and any court rulings that may pause enforcement.