The US Supreme Court has dealt a major blow to Donald Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship, ruling children born in the US are citizens under the Constitution regardless of their parents’ immigration status. The decision also casts fresh scrutiny on Trump’s repeated claims about the policy, including that the US is the only country with birthright citizenship and that it’s driving widespread abuse.
Tuesday’s ruling rejects Trump’s executive order, signed on the first day of his second term, which sought to deny automatic citizenship to babies born to parents who are in the US unlawfully or temporarily. The court found that such children are “citizens at birth” under the 14th Amendment.
The decision is a significant blow to an immigration policy that has been central to Trump’s second-term agenda. For years, Trump and senior members of his administration have denounced birthright citizenship, describing it as unconstitutional and claiming it is widely exploited by undocumented immigrants.
Vice President JD Vance last year called birthright citizenship “the dumbest immigration policy in the world”, while White House adviser Stephen Miller described it on X as “the most preposterous of all constitutional abominations.”.
However, several of the administration’s broader claims about birthright citizenship are not supported by the available evidence.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the United States is “the only country” that grants citizenship based on birthplace, which is false.
While many countries do not offer unrestricted birthright citizenship, dozens still do. According to data compiled by the Pew Research Center, at least 32 countries – predominantly across North and South America – automatically grant citizenship to nearly everyone born within their borders, including Canada, Mexico and Argentina. Around 50 others provide more limited forms of birthright citizenship, often based on a parent’s citizenship or ancestry.
Trump has also repeatedly argued that birthright citizenship encourages “birth tourism”: the practice of deliberately travelling to the US to give birth so a child acquires American citizenship. Following the Supreme Court ruling, he revived the claim in a Truth Social post, sarcastically congratulating Chinese President Xi Jinping on what he called a “birthright win” after previously alleging that wealthy families from China travel to the US specifically for this purpose.
The true scale of birth tourism remains difficult to measure. No federal agency tracks births linked to the practice, making reliable national estimates scarce. One of the most widely cited estimates, published in 2020 by the Center for Immigration Studies, suggested that between 20,000 and 26,000 babies were born annually to women who travelled to the US primarily to obtain citizenship for their children. That represents well under 1% of the 3.61 million births recorded in the United States that year.
Despite the SCOTUS ruling, the Trump administration says it will intensify its crackdown on alleged birth tourism schemes, directing prosecutors to pursue investigations into businesses and individuals accused of facilitating the practice.
Vedika Bahl puts Trump’s birthright claims under the microscope in Truth or Fake.
