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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at curbing birthright citizenship, this time targeting people he says travel to the United States on tourist visas with the intent of giving birth on American soil.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump accused visitors of exploiting the constitutional provision. "They've taken birthright citizenship and they've made a joke out of it," he said.
The new order comes roughly six weeks after the US Supreme Court struck down an earlier Trump directive that sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the US to parents who were undocumented or held temporary visas.
Trump called the late-June ruling "very unfortunate," but defended his latest move as necessary correction. "We're making adjustments because it's very unfair," he said.
Lower courts had already blocked Trump's original order, finding it conflicted with the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to nearly all people born on US soil.
The Supreme Court upheld that view in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by two other conservative-leaning justices along with the court's three liberal-leaning members.
According to Stephen Miller, one of Trump's closest advisors, the latest order goes further than restricting so-called "birth tourism."
It also seeks to deny citizenship to children of members of "foreign terrorist organizations," as well as what Miller described as "large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments."
Miller said the measure "ensures that large numbers of people who wrongly [would] be getting birthright citizenship will no longer be eligible for those benefits."
Under existing US law, consular officers already have authority to deny a visa if they believe an applicant's primary purpose for traveling is to give birth in the country.
The 14th Amendment, ratified after the 1861-1865 Civil War, states that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
Legal exceptions have historically applied to narrow categories, such as children of foreign diplomats, who are not considered subject to US jurisdiction.
The Trump administration had argued unsuccessfully before the courts that the amendment was intended to secure citizenship for formerly enslaved people and their descendants, not for the children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders.
Trump's earlier order rested on the argument that anyone in the country illegally or on a visa was not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and could therefore be excluded from automatic citizenship, an interpretation rejected by the Supreme Court.
The new order is the latest step in Trump's broader push to tighten immigration policy, which has also included efforts to expel millions of undocumented migrants and to strip deportation protections from nationals of more than a dozen countries.
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