The ink wasn’t dry on the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling before the vultures started circling.
Signs and billboards advertising birth tourism packages — “Deliveries starting at $4,000” — are already going up along the southern border and across Mexico. Chinese birth tourism operations are ramping back up. Russian nationals are booking flights. The entire industry that the Trump administration spent years trying to shut down just got a Supreme Court green light to operate openly, brazenly, and at industrial scale.
Trump saw the billboards and said exactly what needed to be said: “American citizenship is not for sale!” Then he announced he’s asking the Supreme Court to immediately rehear the case.
Good. Fight every inch of this. Because the Court got it wrong.
The 6-3 ruling in Trump v. Barbara held that the 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship for children born on American soil to parents who are here illegally or temporarily. Five justices — including, disgracefully, two appointed by Republican presidents — decided that the plain meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” extends to people who entered the country illegally and owe no allegiance to it whatsoever.
This is not what the 14th Amendment was written to do. It was ratified in 1868 to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves and their descendants — Americans who had been denied their birthright by a monstrous legal fiction. It was never intended to be a loophole for birth tourism operations charging $4,000 a delivery. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said so in their dissents. They were right. The majority was wrong.
And now the consequences are arriving faster than even the critics predicted.
Trump’s path forward is narrow but not nonexistent. Under Supreme Court Rule 44, a petition for rehearing must be filed within 25 days of judgment and requires exceptional circumstances — including significant issues the Court may have overlooked. Crucially, at least one justice who joined the majority must support reconsideration for it to move forward. That’s a high bar. Realistically, it’s a long shot.
But long shots are worth taking when the alternative is watching American citizenship become a commodity sold on billboards to the highest bidder.
The DOJ isn’t waiting for the Court to act. A crackdown on birth tourism operations is already underway — targeting the criminal enterprises that profit from this scheme. That’s the right instinct. If the Supreme Court won’t fix the underlying ruling, the administration will make the business model as painful as possible through every other legal mechanism available.
Here’s the bottom line: a Supreme Court ruling that allows billboards to advertise American citizenship for $4,000 is not a ruling that will stand the test of time. The American people understand instinctively what five justices apparently couldn’t — citizenship is the most sacred thing this country confers.
It is not a product. It is not a service. And it is absolutely not for sale.
