Oregon elected leaders condemned President Donald Trump on Aug. 6 for signing two executive orders targeting birthright citizenship and "birth tourism."
Trump has repeatedly called for ending automatic birthright citizenship.
On inauguration day in 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if at least one parent was not an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield joined a lawsuit against the order alongside Washington, Illinois and Arizona.
Approximately 4,000 babies in 2022 were born in Oregon to one or two parents who were not citizens, according to Oregon's lawsuit.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the executive order on June 30 with a 6-3 ruling.
"Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights − to freely participate in our political community," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. "The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to 'every free-born person in this land.' We keep that promise today."
Trump signed a pair of new executive orders on Aug. 6.
The first order applies to four groups of children who would be ineligible for birthright citizenship. The groups include children of two non-citizen parents when either parent is an "alien enemy" defined to include any member of a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization; when either parent is a foreign government employee; when either parent engaged in "birth tourism" or engaged in "fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship"; and children born "in a territory or territorial waters of the country where citizenship is not conferred by Federal statute."
A second order "delegates presidential authorities" to the U.S Secretary of State and Secretary of Homeland Security, directing them to stop the practice of birth tourism, according to a White House "fact sheet."
"We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court … so we're making adjustments," Trump said Aug. 6, according to USA Today.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, previously joined a friend-of-the-court filing alongside other members of Congress calling for the Supreme Court to protect birthright citizenship.
Wyden again slammed Trump's latest effort to roll back automatic birthright citizenship.
"For nearly 160 years of U.S. history, courts and common sense have viewed the plain language of the 14th Amendment with a reading that's completely contrary to Donald Trump's unhinged and uninformed take," Wyden said in a statement to the Statesman Journal. "I expect that long-settled view to prevail again over yet one more Trump scheme to somehow decree into being his perverse obsession with illegally yanking away the citizenship of children born here in America."
U.S Rep. Val Hoyle, D-Oregon, referred to the new orders as offensive and un-American. She echoed Ben Franklin, saying: "If you are willing to give up your liberty for temporary security, then you deserve neither liberty nor security."
"The President continues to overreach with his executive orders when the Constitution is clear and his attempts to overturn birthright citizenship have failed. Now they're going for the back door under the guise of protecting our security," Hoyle said.
Oregon's farmworker union, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, also condemned the "renewed attack."
"Birthright citizenship is enshrined in our Constitution. That was what the Supreme Court affirmed just weeks ago. And yet Trump is attempting, once more, to define who and who has the right to be an American," said PCUN executive director Reyna Lopez.
Lopez, the child of immigrants, described her parents as people who sought a better life. Immigrants like her parents are who keep the country running, she said.
"Ending birthright citizenship, even for specific groups of people, won't make us safer or effectively reform our immigration system. Instead, what it will do is inspire confusion and open the door to more attacks on our rights," Lopez added. "PCUN condemns this Administration's anti-immigrant agenda. We will continue fighting until this country makes meaningful reforms to our immigration process: to simplify the pathway to citizenship, to keep families together and to truly show that it values the lives of immigrants regardless of documentation."
Rayfield said birthright citizenship is settled law.
"The Supreme Court has already weighed in on this issue. President Trump just can't take no for an answer," Rayfield said. "Oregonians deserve a government that treats the Constitution as the final word, and treats people with basic human dignity, not as political targets."
Trump's two new orders are likely to be challenged.
USA Today reporter Zac Anderson contributed to this report.
Dianne Lugo covers the Oregon Legislature and equity issues. Reach her at [email protected] or on X @DianneLugo or Bluesky @diannelugo.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Oregon leaders slam Trump orders targeting birthright citizenship