Trump Set to Sign Executive Orders Targeting Birth Tourism Citizenship, Axios Reports

President Donald Trump plans to sign two executive orders Thursday aimed at cutting off automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S. through commercial birth tourism, according to Axios, as reported by Reuters. Trump's itinerary showed a "signing time" event at the Oval Office on Thursday, which had not begun as of 3:55 p.m. ET (1955 GMT), about 55 minutes past the time slot in the official schedule released by the White House.

The orders reportedly go further than just birth tourism. Axios reported Trump is also seeking to deny birthright citizenship to children born of some foreign diplomatic staff in the U.S., and is looking, potentially, at doing the same for births in U.S. territories in the future.

What Birth Tourism Actually Is

Birth tourism refers to foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. specifically to give birth, so their child gets automatic U.S. citizenship. No U.S. law outright bars this practice.

There is a regulation, though. A federal regulation implemented in 2020, during Trump's first term, prohibits using temporary tourist and business visas for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a newborn. People who engage in birth tourism schemes could be prosecuted for fraud or other related crimes.

So a legal framework addressing the practice already exists. What's unclear from the available reporting is what these new orders add on top of it, or whether they attempt to change who qualifies for citizenship itself rather than simply enforcing existing visa rules.

Nobody Actually Knows How Big This Is

There are no official figures tallying the number of foreigners who come to the U.S. for the explicit purpose of giving birth and obtaining citizenship for their children, or the cost to taxpayers, according to Reuters.

The closest thing to a number comes from the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports lower levels of immigration. Its 2020 analysis estimated that between 20,000 and 25,000 mothers came to the U.S. for birth tourism during a one-year period between 2016 and 2017. That's a single advocacy group's estimate from several years ago, not a government count, and it should be read as such.

For scale: there were 3.6 million births in the U.S. in 2025. Even taking the Center for Immigration Studies estimate at face value, birth tourism would represent a small fraction of total U.S. births.

What's Still Unknown

As of the reporting available, the actual text of the orders had not been made public. Axios's account, relayed through Reuters, describes the intent behind the orders but not the specific legal mechanism Trump plans to use, or how the administration plans to distinguish "birth tourism" cases from other births in the U.S.

The diplomatic staff provision and the potential future application to U.S. territories also raise questions that aren't addressed in the available reporting. The next concrete step is the signing itself and the release of the orders' actual text.