Nearly one in ten children born in the United States is born to an illegal alien mother — or, in colloquial terms, would be considered an “anchor baby.”
According to data published in late March by the Pew Research Center, Illegal immigrant mothers were responsible for approximately 9% of the 3.6 million babies born in the United States in 2023. Of the 320,000 babies born, the data indicates that nearly 260,000 would not be eligible for citizenship if President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship had already been in place.
The breakdown of some of those numbers showed several different scenarios: first, 60,000 of the babies born to illegal immigrant mothers had fathers who were living in the United States legally and would thus qualify for citizenship through their fathers. Another 15,000 babies were born to mothers whose legal status in the United States was temporary and fathers who were either not citizens or not in the United States legally. The remaining 245,000 were born to mothers and fathers who had no legal statues in the United States.
Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 14160 on January 20, 2025, in an attempt to put an end to birthright citizenship. The Trump administration has argued that his order sought to “restores the original meaning” of the citizenship clause — which was to determine the citizenship of freed slaves — and therefore it should not be applied to babies born of parents who are either in the United States temporarily or unlawfully.
While the support for Trump’s order is almost solely from Republicans, that has not always been the case. In 1993, for example, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called for an end to birthright citizenship, saying that it had been a mistake.
“If making it easy to be an illegal alien isn’t enough, how about offering a reward for being an illegal immigrant?” Reid said at the time. “No sane country would do that. Right? Guess again. If you break our laws by entering this country without permission and give birth to a child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship and [a] guarantee of full access to all public and social services this society provides — and that’s a lot of services.”
The Democratic Party has shifted its stance dramatically in the years since, and challengers to Trump’s order have argued that illegal aliens, despite not having legal status in the United States, were nonetheless living in the country and subject to its laws.
The order, which never went into effect due to the numerous legal challenges, was argued before the Supreme Court in early 2026, and a decision is expected sometime in late June or early July.
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