Judge blocks Trump’s latest effort to narrow birthright citizenship

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Trump executive order that would prevent certain people from automatically becoming U.S. citizens at birth.

Since returning to office last year, President Trump has sought to eliminate or narrow birthright citizenship. After the Supreme Court in June struck down his initial attempt to end birthright citizenship, he signed a narrower order last month to deny citizenship to children of “alien enemies,” foreign government employees and people allegedly engaged in “birth tourism.”

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman temporarily halted the Trump administration from enforcing the new order, too. She found a group of people who sued are likely to succeed in showing the order violates their rights under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which grants citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” 

Boardman did not extensively analyze the specific exceptions to birthright citizenship laid out in the Trump administration’s order, instead pointing to the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling, calling it “the law of the land.”

“The 2026 Executive Order is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth,” she said. “This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them.”

CBS News has reached out to the White House for comment.

Mr. Trump’s executive order was directed at “birth tourism,” or the practice of engaging in a “commercial transaction” to travel to the United States before giving birth. It also sought to block citizenship for people whose parents are deemed “alien enemies” because they belong to terrorist organizations — a designation the Trump administration has applied to drug cartels.

Attorneys for the government argued the Supreme Court’s ruling over the summer didn’t prevent the Trump administration from issuing rules to narrow birthright citizenship, noting that some exceptions have been recognized, including for the children of diplomats and alien enemies.

In a filing, Justice Department lawyers said the Supreme Court merely found the children of temporary or undocumented immigrants — the category covered by Mr. Trump’s first push to end birthright citizenship — “are not disqualified from birthright citizenship.” But the court “never suggested that every child born to such parents is per se a citizen, with no exceptions.”

The plaintiffs, including several immigrants and the advocacy group CASA, argued that historically accepted exceptions to birthright citizenship are narrow, and the new executive order is unconstitutionally “attempting to expand those categories.”

“The President has no power to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution, and he should be enjoined from denying citizenship to the members of the certified class under this or any other Executive Order,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote last week.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote that the “risk that Defendants might deprive class members of citizenship based on false allegations against their parents is credible.” They noted that the Trump administration has defined “alien enemies” extremely broadly to include alleged members of certain transnational criminal groups, and some people who have been deported under that designation have denied gang membership.

Lawyers also wrote that some of the plaintiffs are concerned that by buying a plane ticket to travel to the United States, they may run afoul of the part of the executive order targeted at people who engaged in a “commercial transaction.”