Donald Trump plans to end Birthright Citizenship

President Donald Trump has reiterated his campaign promise to abolish Birthright Citizenship.

In a recently released video as President-elect, Trump reaffirmed his long-standing commitment to terminate this practice. He asserted that he intends to eliminate automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. This stance contradicts the longstanding interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868.

Birthright citizenship originates from the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which was enacted three years after the conclusion of the American Civil War, a conflict that abolished the practice of enslaving Black individuals in Southern states. This amendment overturned a Supreme Court ruling that had previously determined that neither enslaved nor free African Americans were entitled to citizenship in the United States.

The amendment conferred citizenship upon all individuals “born or naturalized in the United States,” which includes those formerly enslaved, and has traditionally been understood to extend this right regardless of the legal status of the individuals’ parents residing in the country.

Despite the absence of any mention of birth tourism in his recent video, former President Trump, during his campaign announcement, asserted his intention to terminate the practice of so-called birth tourism through an executive order.

Previously, Trump had similarly vowed to address this issue during his presidency; however, his administration ultimately did not implement such an order. Instead, in 2020, a rule was issued by the State Department, instructing staff to deny nonimmigrant visas to women if there exists a “reason to believe” that their primary motivation for traveling to the United States is to secure citizenship for a child through childbirth in the country.

In his campaign announcement, Trump alleged that “hundreds of thousands of people” have engaged in birth tourism.

“My order will also end their unfair practice known as birth tourism, where hundreds of thousands of people from all over the planet squat in hotels for the last few weeks of pregnancy to illegitimately and illegally obtain U.S. citizenship for the child, often to later exploit chain migration to jump the line and get green cards for themselves and their family members,” Trump said in his campaign video. “It’s a practice that’s so horrible and so egregious, but we let it go forward. At least one parent will have to be a citizen or a legal resident in order to qualify.”

According to Factcheck.org, Trump’s campaign website provided a yearly figure, saying that “tens of thousands of foreign nationals fraudulently enter the U.S. each year during the final weeks of their pregnancies for the sole purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for their child.”

The website stated that the Trump campaign did not respond to their inquiry seeking support for these figures, but it seems likely they come from the Center for Immigration Studies, which estimates there are 20,000 to 26,000 possible birth tourists a year.

If Trump were looking at a period of, say, 10 years, then his estimate of “hundreds of thousands” of birth tourists could be accurate, Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, told us in a phone interview. But Camarota acknowledged the CIS estimate was based on data that was not limited only to women coming to the U.S. “for the last few weeks of pregnancy,” as Trump said.

Ending birthright citizenship has been something Trump has been thinking about for years. When he ran for president in 2015, Trump told Bill O’Reilly from Fox News that the issue was “fully vetted now” and believed that “an act of Congress” would be enough to change it. However, many experts on the Constitution and immigration said that changing this would actually need a constitutional amendment, which is harder than just passing a law. A few people, though, did agree with Trump.

As President in 2025, it’s not yet clear which party will control the US House of Representatives for the next two years, but Republicans are getting closer to having a majority, which would give them full control of the government.

On Saturday morning, the party was a few seats away from the 218 needed to take over the House of Representatives.

The Senate and the White House have already switched to Republican control, meaning President-elect Donald Trump could have a lot of power to implement his agenda once he takes office on January 20, 2025.

Having control of the House allows a party to start spending bills and begin impeachment processes against government officials.