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Trump Admin’s Potential Passport Rule for Children Raises Legal Questions
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The Trump administration is considering a new passport requirement that could require parents to provide proof of their own U.S. citizenship or immigration status when applying for passports for their children, according to Reuters. If implemented, the proposal would mark a significant change in how the State Department processes some passport applications and comes as President Donald Trump continues his attempts to narrow access to birthright citizenship.
Under the potential policy, parents could be asked to submit documents such as passports, birth certificates or immigration paperwork to establish their citizenship or legal status. The administration has not finalized the proposal, and State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement to Newsweek on Tuesday in part, “President Trump has been unequivocal that this Administration will protect the meaning and value of American citizenship, full stop, and that includes making sure our passport adjudication process fully reflects that standard." He added in the statement that the department does not validate or chase leaked documents.
The proposal is raising questions about whether the government could use the passport process to effectively impose restrictions on children who are otherwise U.S. citizens under the Constitution. The 14th Amendment generally establishes birthright citizenship for people born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. The Supreme Court has also recently ruled against Trump's efforts to restrict birthright citizenship .
“The Department will require parental information and evidence of parental citizenship or immigration status as part of its determination whether the applicant is subject to EO 14418,” the State Department draft guidance reads, according to Reuters.
As of now, parents applying for passports for U.S.-born children generally must provide proof of the child’s U.S. citizenship, evidence of their relationship to the child and photo identification, but they are not generally required to submit separate proof of their own citizenship or immigration status.
Legal experts differ somewhat on where the constitutional line would be drawn. Former Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said requiring parents to provide documentation could raise serious constitutional concerns if it were used to determine whether a U.S.-born child is entitled to citizenship or a passport.
"The Fourteenth Amendment says that people born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens at birth, and the Supreme Court has interpreted that protection broadly for more than a century," Aronberg told Newsweek on Tuesday in part.
"If this policy is formally implemented, I would absolutely expect immediate lawsuits. The core argument will be pretty simple: an executive branch agency cannot rewrite the Citizenship Clause of the Constitution through passport paperwork. Plaintiffs would likely seek emergency court orders preventing the government from applying the policy while those cases are litigated," he concluded.
Neama Rahmani, former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, offered a more nuanced assessment, saying that requiring parents to provide documentation is not necessarily unconstitutional by itself, but that denying a passport to a U.S.-born citizen because of a parent's immigration status could present a much more serious constitutional problem.
"The test case would be a parent who is in the country unlawfully, but whose child was born in the United States. The child would be a birthright citizen under the Constitution and the Supreme Court's recent Trump v. Barbara decision. But practically speaking, parents who have no status are unlikely to apply for passports for their citizen children out of fear of being arrested and deported," Rahmani told Newsweek on Tuesday night.
Trump signed an executive order on August 6, 2026, aimed at cracking down on what his administration calls “birth tourism”—the practice of foreign nationals traveling to the United States on temporary, nonimmigrant visas for the purpose of giving birth. The order defines birth tourism as entering the U.S. on a nonimmigrant visa to give birth on American soil or helping another foreign national enter for that purpose.
The order directs the secretaries of State and Homeland Security to take steps to prevent people believed to be engaging in birth tourism from entering the country or obtaining a visa or other travel authorization. It also allows for visas to be revoked and individuals to be permanently barred from entering the U.S. The order allows for exemptions on humanitarian grounds or when officials determine that someone's entry is in the national interest.
The White House says the policy is intended to ensure that nonimmigrant visas are used for their lawful purposes rather than as a means of obtaining permanent immigration benefits. The order does not itself eliminate birthright citizenship; rather, it targets foreign nationals who enter or attempt to enter the U.S. specifically to give birth as part of what the administration defines as “birth tourism.”
The proposal remains under review at the State Department and has not been finalized. If adopted, it could be implemented administratively as part of the agency's effort to carry out Trump's August 6 executive order on birth tourism, without requiring congressional approval. Any final policy would likely face swift legal challenges as courts continue to consider lawsuits related to the administration's broader efforts to restrict birthright citizenship.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Gray R. Thomas
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