Hot on the heels of the Supreme Court ruling curtailing the power of lower federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions on the federal government’s policies, the Trump administration is moving fast to restrict birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants and birth tourists.
According to Trump’s lawyers, who oversaw the landmark ruling, the administration will not enforce the president’s Executive Order 14160, “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which restricts birthright citizenship within 30 days, as ordered by the Supreme Court.
Thereafter, the administration will seemingly use all the necessary tools to prevent foreign nationals from exploiting the Fourteenth Amendment to craftily obtain U.S. Citizenship for their foreign children. China, perhaps the United States’ most formidable adversary, has its citizens exploit the provision on a massive scale.
“The Court’s stay thus allows Defendants to immediately begin to ‘develop and issue public guidance about the executive’s plans to implement the executive order,” the Department of Justice’s attorney Brad Rosenberg stated during a Maryland hearing by the activist judge who had issued the nationwide injunction.
Trump’s executive order directs all government agencies to deny citizenship to all children born to illegal immigrants or birth tourists, unless one parent is a U.S. citizen. The order was the subject of a protracted lawsuit that saw the activist judge issue a nationwide injunction enjoining the Trump administration from denying citizenship to the offspring of non-citizens.
Trump appealed after several hostile rulings in the lower courts and questioned their authority to issue such overreaching nationwide orders instead of simply ruling on the matter before them, which led to the landmark ruling.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruling did not address the legality of Trump’s executive order, but rather stated that the plaintiffs should file class-action lawsuits to obtain nationwide injunctions. Various liberal groups, including UCLA, have responded by amending their filings to reflect the new reality.
On June 30, Trump’s lawyers were grilled by U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in Maryland on how the administration intends to implement Executive Order 14160. The judge demanded a written plan on how the federal government intends to move forward.
With her powers to issue nationwide injunctions clipped, she also wanted to know if the Trump administration would start deporting children of illegal immigrants who were not included in the original lawsuit. Rosenberg had until noon on July 1, 2025, to submit the written plan.
On February 5, 2025, Biden-appointed Judge Boardman had issued the nationwide injunction to Trump’s Executive Order 14160, resulting in the protracted legal battle that ended in Trump’s victory. In her ruling, Boardman claimed that citizenship was “the most precious right,” despite it being a privilege for non-citizens.
Rosenberg assured the liberal judge that the administration does not intend to act for 30 days, until the Supreme Court’s moratorium expires. The hearing also intended to ascertain that the plaintiffs’ case qualified as a class action lawsuit in light of the landmark Supreme Court ruling. The plaintiffs’ lawyers also demanded a preliminary injunction for their clients while their challenge awaits determination, claiming that removal would cause irreparable harm.
Nonetheless, Trump has reiterated that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended for the children of slaves to gain U.S. citizenship, not for noncitizens who are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. The amendment was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, and the Supreme Court had ruled that Scott, a slave, was not a U.S. citizen.
