Pregnant women may soon face tighter entry restrictions into the United States as President Donald Trump’s administration weighs fresh measures following the Supreme Court ruling that blocked his attempt to end birthright citizenship.
The proposed move would represent another push by the White House to curb birthright citizenship, a constitutional principle that grants automatic American citizenship to babies born on US soil. Trump and his allies have long argued that the policy encourages what they describe as “birth tourism,” where foreign nationals travel to the US late in pregnancy so their children can obtain citizenship at birth.
Although the practice exists, experts say it accounts for only a small share of births in the country. The US government does not officially track the number of children born to foreign visitors, but estimates have placed the figure at between 20,000 and 26,000 each year.
The administration has repeatedly maintained that birthright citizenship acts as an incentive for illegal immigration and unfairly benefits people who break immigration laws while others follow the legal process.
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, said the White House would take a close look at the possibility of barring heavily pregnant foreign women from entering the country.
According to him, the administration now has to think carefully about who is allowed into the US, even on a temporary visa, because of concerns over birth tourism. He argued that some visitors come to America simply to give birth, thereby securing lifetime citizenship for their child and what he described as long term access to US benefits.
He said the issue raises serious questions for the administration and is one of several areas now under renewed review.
Following Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Trump remained fully committed to protecting what she called the value of natural born American citizenship. She added that the president had directed Congress to take immediate steps to address the issue.
Jackson also said the Department of Justice would prioritise investigations into birth tourism schemes, insisting that the administration still had several options available to protect American citizenship.
The idea of restricting pregnant visitors has also gained support from some Trump allies. Speaking on Fox and Friends, Markwayne Mullin suggested that some women enter the US on tourist visas in the final weeks of pregnancy specifically to give birth.
He claimed some of those children later grow up outside the United States but retain citizenship, returning years later under circumstances he argued could create broader national security concerns.
The renewed debate follows the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Trump’s Day One executive order, which sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the US to parents who were either in the country illegally or on a temporary basis.
In a 6 to 3 ruling, the court held that the attempt to deny citizenship to babies born on American soil was unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment. The decision marked the most significant test of that constitutional protection in more than a century and dealt a major blow to Trump’s effort to redefine the meaning of American citizenship through executive power.
