Judge Blocks Trump’s Latest Order Aimed at Limiting Birthright Citizenship

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order that aimed to restrict birthright citizenship.

The ruling, from U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman in Greenbelt, Maryland, granted immigrant rights advocates’ request for a preliminary injunction, which comes roughly two months after the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s initial effort to end birthright citizenship.

At first, the judge declined to block the directive Trump signed on Aug. 6 but allowed the immigrant groups to revise their lawsuit so that she could then consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction against what she described as an “unprecedented” order.

“The President has tried, through Executive Order, to upend our country’s longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship and eliminate, for large swaths of Americans, the right to citizenship by birth, a right enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Boardman said in her Wednesday opinion.

Her decision blocks the federal government from “taking any other action to interfere with, deny, or fail to recognize the citizenship” of children of unlawful or temporary foreign nationals.

She further wrote that the executive order is “almost certainly unconstitutional” because of a Supreme Court ruling on June 30.

A majority of the justices had invalidated Trump’s first effort at ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens and temporary visitors.

The president signed two executive orders, Ending Birth Tourism and Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, in response about a month later.

The latter executive order sought to expand the definition of people who are ineligible for birthright citizenship.

“That includes, for instance, alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations, and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments,” Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, previously said.

The other order aimed to ban birth tourism, the practice of a foreign national traveling to the United States on a tourist visa with the purpose of giving birth to a child in the country so the child is guaranteed automatic U.S. citizenship.

During the signing ceremony, Trump said birthright citizenship has been made into a joke. Administration officials have claimed an industry is rising up around birth tourism schemes.

In an effort to further crack down on these schemes, the administration announced a Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force, which has revoked the visas of hundreds of foreign nationals accused of participating in the practice.

Immigrant groups CASA and Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, which had won a preliminary injunction from Boardman last year against Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship before the Supreme Court ruling, again requested the judge block the president’s renewed effort.

The groups claimed the order was unconstitutional and “in defiance” of the high court’s order. 

By contrast, the Department of Justice (DOJ) argued the new order was narrowed, unlike the sweeping 2025 one, and was only meant to apply to certain categories of individuals that the justices outlined in their decision, including babies born to terrorists or to foreign government employees. 

Boardman did not issue a ruling on Aug. 28, because the immigrant groups’ original lawsuit against the 2025 order did not mention Trump’s 2026 order, so she did not block it at the time.

Government lawyers have called the lawsuit against the president’s latest order premature, because federal agencies have not yet issued any guidance on how the directive would be carried out. Any legal challenges should wait until that time comes, the DOJ argued. 

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the Wednesday ruling.