by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 8:20 AM ET, Thu July 2, 2026
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the constitutional guarantee that anyone born within the United States becomes a citizen, called birthright citizenship, the Trump Administration’s acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, began warning law enforcement and federal prosecutors to watch out for and crack down on “birth tourism,” a little-known and rare practice.
According to the Guardian, Blanche spoke to reporters following the Supreme Court ruling, saying in part, “There’s other things that [the Department if Homeland Security] can do, and the federal government can do in the visa process, and the application process, to try to minimize or limit the opportunity of folks coming here not to visit, and not to do what they’re saying they’re doing on the tourist visa, but just to have a baby that can then be a US citizen.”
His words do indicate that there may be more visa restrictions or changes on the way to restrict the so-called “birth tourism” issue.
The assistant attorney general for the national fraud division, Colin McDonald, published an office-wide memo following the ruling, directing Justice Department staff to charge people with fraud in alleged birth tourism cases, potentially increasing legal battles for women who visit the country and give birth within the U.S., saying in part that the department “will zealously protect the sanctity of United States citizenship.”
Yet is birth tourism a big issue?
The Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank, estimates there are between 20,000 and 26,000 births by women visiting the United States while on tourist visas, which is less than 1% of all babies born within the country annually.
However, this is only an estimate, and it’s possible the number could be lower, despite the Trump Administration’s and Republican Party’s insistence that it’s a major issue, as evidence of birth tourism is extremely limited.
Meanwhile, immigrant-rights activists and members of the Democratic Party applauded the Supreme Court’s decision as a major win for the Constitution and the nation.
“This decision is about what it means to be an American under our Constitution, and the court’s unwavering opinion makes clear that if you are born here, you are a citizen,” said SangYeob Kim, director of the ACLU-NH Immigrants’ Rights Project. “We thank the brave immigrant parents and their children who brought this lawsuit to the highest court in the land to protect what we have long known: no politician — including the president — can decide who is worthy of citizenship. We share in their overwhelming emotions, and relief, in our fight to protect the constitutional rights for all born in our nation.”
Birthright citizenship has been enshrined into the American Constitution since 1868 and upheld by the Supreme Court following Wong Kim Ark's case, after anti-Chinese immigration laws allowed officials to deny him re-entry into the United States following a trip to China, despite Wong Kim Ark having been born in the United States.
In the Supreme Court's 6-2 decision to uphold birthright citizenship for Wong and all others, it explained to deny Wong his citizenship would mean “to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German, or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States.”
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