President Donald Trump and his advisors are looking for ways to prevent "birth tourism" following a Supreme Court ruling that upholds birthright citizenship.
Trump had previously issued an executive order that stated that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which established birthright citizenship, did not apply to people in the U.S. illegally. The order was challenged, and the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it was unconstitutional.
Speaking to Fox News, Trump adviser Stephen Miller called the ruling a "deep knife wound to the heart of the American Republic."
Miller said the ruling allows pregnant people from the "third world" to come into the U.S. and create U.S. citizens.
"They can just come into the country, have a baby in a hospital, paid for by you and me, and then that baby's automatically a citizen," Miller said, adding that the child then would allow the family to access American cash and welfare.
Miller then discussed what he and the Fox News host referred to as "birth tourism."
"You have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis, because the possibility...for birth tourism," Miller said.
The current interpretation of the 14th Amendment dates back to an 1898 Supreme Court case. "Since a landmark 1898 Supreme Court decision, courts have generally held that the 14th Amendment covers everyone except children of foreign diplomats, members of occupying foreign forces or members of Native American tribes. Congress extended birthright citizenship to Native Americans by statute in 1924," the Pew Research Center stated.
According to the Pew Research Center, the U.S. is one of only 33 countries that grants automatic citizenship at birth. For example, Europe does not have automatic birthright citizenship like the U.S.
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald wrote in a memo that the U.S. already has laws against the kind of schemes Miller referenced.
"The criminal laws of the United States already prohibit conduct inherent to so many of these so-called 'birth tourism' schemes," McDonald wrote in the memo posted to X. "For example, many such schemes start with a false visa application – with lies about the purpose or duration of one's travel to the United States."
Vice President JD Vance also vowed to fight to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. despite the adverse Supreme Court ruling.
"I don't know how anybody can say that if a person who is an illegal alien, or a person for example who's pregnant and comes to the United States on a vacation, they have a baby and all of a sudden their entire family gets the benefits of American citizenship, I don't think that's what the framers of the 14th Amendment had in mind," Vance told press on Wednesday.
"Sometimes the Supreme Court makes mistakes. We're going to try to correct that mistake, but nobody's perfect, including the Supreme Court," he added.
