In line with his 2024 campaign promise, President Donald Trump issued an executive order his first day in office declaring that future children of people in the country illegally will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.
Birthright citizenship refers to people's right to become U.S citizens if they're born in the U.S., regardless of their parents' immigration status. The order is expected to prompt a court fight; it will not undo birthright citizenship on its own.
Trump's order says that the privilege of U.S. citizenship "does not automatically extend" to children born in the U.S. when the mother was "unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person's birth" or when the "mother's presence in the United States at the time of said person's birth was lawful but temporary." It lists temporary statuses such as visiting the country on the visa waiver program or visiting on a student, work or tourist visa.
The order says it will apply in 30 days to children born under those circumstances. Trump's directive says agencies cannot issue documents recognizing citizenship or accept any governmental documents purporting to recognize citizenship for births in those cases. He told department leaders to issue public guidance within 30 days for the order's application.
Trump tried, and failed, to curtail this right in his first term. He did not try an executive order then; he preferred to wait on a bill from Congress, he said in 2018, "because that's permanent."
As Trump campaigned on this promise in 2024, legal experts told us that attempts to end birthright citizenship would prompt a court battle over the long-standing interpretation of the 14th Amendment and could require a constitutional amendment.
The 14th Amendment says that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
A 1952 statute echoes the 14th Amendment's language, reading in part: "The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: (a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
Universal birthright citizenship's opponents see wiggle room in the qualifier "subject to the jurisdiction thereof," which appears in both places.
The phrase has traditionally been interpreted to exclude only the U.S.-born children of foreign diplomats or of enemy forces engaged in hostilities on U.S. soil. But people skeptical of birthright citizenship's legal basis have argued that the U.S. Supreme Court has never specifically ruled on whether the children of people in the country illegally would qualify for birthright citizenship.
Trump's executive order takes that stance, saying that the amendment "has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States" and has "always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof.'"
Peter J. Spiro, a Temple University Law School professor, told PolitiFact that a strong argument for continuing birthright citizenship is that "that's how we've done it for more than a century now. The historical practice is well entrenched: The children of undocumented parents have always been extended birth citizenship. The practice has been uniform and, until recently, uncontested."
Birthright citizenship's supporters are likely to sue over Trump's order, which could leave the ultimate decision to the Supreme Court.
Trump's executive order moves Trump's intent forward but lacks the power to change constitutional language on its own. We rate this promise In the Works.