Trump signs immigration actions to limit birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON — President Trump is trying again to limit the number of people born in the country who can become American citizens, in a sign that even after his first attempt at limiting birthright citizenship was rejected by the Supreme Court, he’s ready to renew his efforts.
The president said he was signing two executive actions on immigration, including one limiting the number of people eligible for citizenship after being born in the United States. The written executive order released Thursday was narrower in scope than the previous one shot down by the Supreme Court and appeared to focus on restricting automatic citizenship to specific categories of people, including children born to adults with connections to foreign embassies or organizations as well as anyone considered an “alien enemy” of the United States.
It also aimed to restrict birthright citizenship to anyone whose parents “engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship.”
A second order seeks to curb what Trump called “birth tourism” by increasing restrictions on visitors to the U.S. who want to obtain visas to give birth while in the country.
Trump said he thought his latest actions would be constitutional.
“I thought we were going to win it at the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because of it and we’re ending it a different way,” Trump said.
In June, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s previous efforts to declare that children born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily aren’t American citizens, and upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship.
On the first day of Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship, which allows anyone born in the United States to automatically become an American citizen.
Trump’s administration immediately was sued by opponents who said the executive order went against the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which makes anyone born in the country a citizen, with very limited exceptions.
The executive order was blocked by several lower courts and never took effect.
In June, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s order by a 6-3 vote. But the vote was too close for many immigration advocates and legal observers who felt the legal question of birthright citizenship was a long-settled issue.
Weissert and Santana write for the Associated Press.