Defying a Supreme Court ruling, US President Donald Trump has signed two new executive orders to limit birthright citizenship. He took the step on Thursday.
With this move, Trump has again challenged a clause of the US constitution, even though the Supreme Court had earlier rejected one of his attempts on the issue.
For this Republican president, one of the top priorities in his hardline stance on immigration is limiting the right to birthright citizenship. The White House’s main aim is to stop so-called “birth tourism,” in which pregnant foreign women travel to the United States to give birth.
After a setback at the Supreme Court on 30 June, Trump had called on the US Congress to act on the issue. But on Thursday he chose the executive-order route. Although such orders set government policy, they are not as strong as laws passed by Congress.
The Supreme Court had earlier struck down one of Trump’s executive orders as unconstitutional. That order had targeted a large number of immigrants living in the United States illegally or temporarily.
The Trump administration claims, however, that the new directives do not fall under the Supreme Court’s ruling, because this time a new interpretation has been given to certain historically established exceptions to birthright citizenship. The aim is to widen further the range of people ineligible for citizenship.
At the signing at the Oval Office in Washington on Thursday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said: “From the moment these orders are signed, the practice of birth tourism is banned.”
The Center for Immigration Studies, an organisation that works to reduce immigration, said in a 2020 analysis that between 2016 and 2017, some 20,000 to 25,000 pregnant women came to the United States to give birth.
Notably, 3.6 million (36 lakh) babies were born in the United States in 2025.
The two executive orders also limit birthright US citizenship for the children of those classified under US law as “alien enemies” — citizens of hostile countries.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report