Birthright citizenship battle persists in courts, Congress

On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160 to deny citizenship to children of temporary visa holders and undocumented immigrants. The Supreme Court struck down the order, but the Trump administration has not backed down from the battle over birthright citizenship.

UT students who are undocumented or have undocumented parents are still uncertain whether future children in their families will be United States citizens. For one mechanical engineering junior, who requested to remain anonymous because of his parents’ citizenship status, that uncertainty hits close to home. 

“I was really shocked (by Executive Order 14160),” the mechanical engineering junior said. “I knew Trump was really against immigrants and people like us, but I just didn’t think he’d take it that far as to completely go against the Constitution.”

Though the executive order or the legislation it inspired would not affect his citizenship, he said the battle still matters: it affects people close to him and makes him question how secure his citizenship is.

“If they can do that, why can’t they just take away my citizenship outright?” he said. “I know some people who (the order, or the legislation it inspired,) might affect if they try to start a family. It’s not fair that I had that right and it gets taken away for later generations.”

Trump argued the order did not violate the Constitution. His administration maintained the 14th Amendment never covered children of temporary visa holders and undocumented immigrants, since they are not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which prevents them from having political allegiance to the U.S.

The Supreme Court rejected his argument in Trump v. Barbara, affirming that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means being present in the U.S., and the amendment’s citizenship guarantee applies to nearly everyone born on U.S. soil. 

In a separate opinion, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh proposed that Congress could revise the Immigration and Nationality Act to exclude children of temporary visa holders and undocumented immigrants. His proposal prompted legislation from representatives of states such as Florida, Tennessee and Virginia.

U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Lewisville, took a different route. His proposed Citizenship Act of 2026 cites the Supreme Court’s 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that the 14th Amendment excludes “children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation.” The bill argues that undocumented immigrants and birth tourists qualify for that exclusion and awaits review from the House Committee on the Judiciary. 

“We should not extend one of the greatest privileges our nation can bestow, American citizenship, to the children of those who entered our country unlawfully,” Gill said in a news release. 

One journalism freshman who requested anonymity because of her parents’ legal status disagrees with qualifying undocumented immigrants as such.

“People overlook the hardships that (undocumented) immigrants actually go through,” the freshman said. “(There are) immigrants working under horrible conditions just to be living paycheck to paycheck, and still abiding by all those citizens’ laws, like paying the taxes, and not justifying their actions by saying, ‘Oh well, I’m not from here, so I don’t have to follow these certain rules.’”

Her father works 12-hour days in unsafe conditions, a sacrifice that lets her attend UT. She said the Citizenship Act of 2026 is one of several bills affecting undocumented immigrants that disrupt her daily life.

“It makes me feel alienated. … I can’t focus on school as much because I’m like, ‘Wow, did they make another rule to target my friends?’ That’s my biggest concern,” she said.

She often worries about her parents at home, fearing that they could be deported and she would have to leave her education behind.

As children of undocumented immigrants face legislation affecting their families, the country remains split on whether they should be denied birthright citizenship. According to Pew Research Center, 95% of U.S. adults support birthright citizenship for children born to U.S.-born parents and 94% support it for children born to legal immigrants, but only 50% support it for children born to undocumented immigrants. 

“The nuance really comes down to the fact that it’s inspired by fear factor, where we’re told that undocumented immigrants (are) the real danger,” the junior said. “But I’ve seen some statistics that say otherwise, and really, that’s just something that’s been sparked by countless, countless, countless media, especially Trump feeding that.”

While the junior rejects the notion that undocumented immigrants cause problems in the U.S., supporters of restricting birthright citizenship share that notion and extend it to populations targeted by Executive Order 14418. 

Trump signed Executive Order 14418 on Aug. 6, denying birthright citizenship to children of designated foreign terrorist organization members, foreign government employees and those born via citizenship purchase or in a U.S. territory where citizenship is not conferred by federal statute. On Sept. 2, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman temporarily blocked the order.

Despite Boardman’s block, Chuck DeVore, a former California State Assembly member and Chief Officer for National Initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, argued that restricting birthright citizenship is necessary to protect the U.S.

“(Birthright citizenship) exploits a glaring loophole,” DeVore wrote to the Texan. “Automatic citizenship is being claimed by people who have no intention of becoming Americans or assimilating into our civic culture, but who simply seek personal advantage.”

He then cast birth tourism, the exploitation of birthright citizenship when a pregnant woman travels to the U.S. so her child receives citizenship, as a national security concern.

“The practice of birth tourism, particularly from communist China, creates the risk of an internal line of attack against the United States: individuals whose primary allegiance remains with a hostile foreign power but who obtain U.S. citizenship for their children,” DeVore wrote.

Trump has acted on DeVore’s concern. Executive Order 14418, now temporarily blocked, addressed birth tourism by denying citizenship to children born via citizenship purchase, and Executive Order 14419 restricted the use of nonimmigrant visas to give birth in the U.S. 

Gov. Greg Abbott signed his own executive order on birth tourism and directed agencies to investigate birth tourism schemes after two Texas hospitals advertised “birth packages” in Mexico. Congress is now weighing in on birth tourism too.

On Sept. 15, FBI Director Kash Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Trump administration is “working with … Congress to draft new legislation … to make sure that we can combat the threat.”

Still, not everyone agrees that efforts to restrict birthright citizenship and birth tourism are necessary.

“It’s difficult (to) imagine that the executive order or legislative proposals are anything more than continued efforts to stir up a base that falsely believes that birthright citizenship is a genuine problem for the U.S. instead of simply an issue in an ongoing culture war dating back many decades,” UT law professor Sanford Levinson wrote to the Texan.

The journalism freshman described U.S. citizenship as a “lifetime opportunity.” For future generations, that opportunity hinges on court rulings, executive orders and congressional legislation, with the country split between those who see birthright citizenship as exploiting the U.S. and those who see efforts to restrict it as fueling an anti-immigration culture war.

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