Trump targets 'birth tourism'

"We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright… so we’re making adjustments," Trump said Aug. 6 during a White House event.

Trump's new push to deny citizenship to some children born in the United States is more narrowly tailored and would impact fewer people. The administration said it is focused on children who "do not fall within the rule of birthright citizenship as announced by the Supreme Court."

The president's first order declares certain individuals are ineligible for birthright citizenship when neither of their parents are a citizen, including the child of an "alien enemy" or foreign government employee. It also targets the children of parents who engage in a "commercial transaction" to access birthright citizenship, including paying "to ensure that the person’s mother is present in the United States, or a territory of the United States, to give birth."

In the second order, Trump tasked the State Department and Department of Homeland Security with stopping individuals from entering the country "for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism."

The Supreme Court overturned an executive order Trump issued last year ending birthright citizenship for all children who don't have at least one parent with legal status, ruling it violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The Amendment states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

In challenging the order, the American Civil Liberties Union said birthright citizenship is "foundational to who we are as a nation." Trump's latest bid to redefine citizenship also is likely to face a legal challenge.

"The Supreme Court already decided this issue: Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution," the ACLU said in a statement after Trump signed the new order. "Any executive order that tries to attack birthright citizenship will meet the same fate as President Trump's last one."

The Trump administration has focused on cracking down on birth tourism - when pregnant foreigners travel to the United States to give birth so their children will be citizens - in the wake of the June 30 Supreme Court ruling, but the extent of the practice is unclear. Researchers have estimated anywhere from 2,000 to 39,000 children are born to birth tourists each year.

In a written argument to the Supreme Court, 140 university professors said birth tourism "accounts for an infinitesimal proportion of children" born in the United States each year. Trump said Aug. 6 that the number is in the "hundreds of thousands."

"It's become a big business, and we're ending that business," the president said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller touted Trump's move as "historic."

"This has been something that people have talked about, not only for years but for decades," Miller said. "The idea that people come here, pretend to be a tourist, pretend to be a visitor, say they want to go to Disneyland, they want to go visit a monument or go to a national park. But the real reason they’re here is to have a child, to make that child an automatic citizen."

Trump has sought to restrict birthright citizenship as part of a sweeping, hardline immigration agenda centered around mass deportations. He campaigned on overturning the constitutional provision and attended Supreme Court oral arguments in the case.

Among the Trump administration's court arguments for limiting birthright citizenship: Birth tourism incentivizes illegal immigration and threatens national security. The justices ruled 6-3 against the Trump administration.

"Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights − to freely participate in our political community," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to 'every free-born person in this land.' We keep that promise today."