Brandon Gill, Jim Banks draft bill to classify birth tourists as 'invaders,' prevent automatic citizenship

Texas Representative Brandon Gill announced he had joined Indiana Senator Jim Banks in bringing the “Citizenship Act.” The Act, if enacted into law, would classify foreigners who come into the country for the purpose of giving birth to obtain US citizenship for their children, making them so-called "anchor babies," as invaders, which would exclude their offspring from citizenship under the federal statute written following the Supreme Court's Wong Kim Ark ruling.

The portion of the bill that Gill posted to his X account reads as follows: “A bill to declare that any person who enters the United States without authorization or for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism is considered an invader and to amend section 301(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to exclude the children of invaders from birthright citizenship.”

Banks talked about the newly drafted bill in an appearance on Newsmax, where he spoke about why he viewed this initiative as so vital. 

“This Supreme Court decision a few weeks ago will go down as one of the worst of my lifetime, if not the worst of all,” Banks said of the recent 6-3 Supreme Court ruling that struck down President Trump’s executive ban on birthright citizenship. “It’s a direct attack on American sovereignty. I think most Democrats in America and I know all Republicans in America—anyone with common sense understands that the babies of illegals in our country should not be granted birthright citizenship; that was never the intent of the 14th Amendment. My bill is simple; it just makes the point that the tens of millions of illegals who have flooded into our country because of Joe Biden are invaders into our country.”

The recent Supreme Court ruling drew a wide swath of outrage, primarily among Republicans, with President Trump leading the chorus on Truth Social.

“The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process,” Trump wrote June 30 on Truth Social. “No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!”

Other conservative reactions to the ruling were even more forceful in tone, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller lambasting the decision on X.

“One of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the long history of the Supreme Court. American citizenship is not the birthright of the world,” he wrote. “It belongs only and solely to Americans. No provision of the Constitution can be read to require our national self-obliteration.”

The piece of legislation comes as Justive Kavanaugh, who ruled against the president, left the door open for more legislation on the issue in his opinion, creating an opening for Republicans like Gill and Banks. He specified that the federal statute classifies some persons as not eligible for birthright citizenship and said that Congress could amend that statute to include children born to birth tourists or to people who are unlawfully in the country. The statute says that invaders are not eligible for citizenship, hence the reclassification attempt by Banks and Gill.