TIJUANA — President Donald Trump signed an order regarding birthright citizenship on Jan. 20, 2025, his first day in a second term. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to review the constitutionality of this order.

Trump posted in April, "We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow 'Birthright' Citizenship!" The United States extends citizenship to children born within its borders, a practice enshrined after the Civil War through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the late 1800s determined that most individuals born in the U.S. are citizens regardless of their parents' legal status.

Mexico also extends citizenship to children born within its borders. Approximately three dozen countries, predominantly in the Americas, guarantee automatic citizenship to children born on their territory. These countries include Canada, Honduras, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. There are no figures available on how many children born to noncitizens have acquired Mexican birthright citizenship.

Vivianne Petit Frere, a restaurant owner in Tijuana, Mexico, has lived there for over five years. She operates a restaurant named Lakou Lakay. Petit Frere's granddaughter, Alexca, was born in Mexico two years ago and is a Mexican citizen by birth. Mexico allows the parents of children with birthright citizenship to become permanent residents, and Petit Frere and her daughter had permanent residency in Mexico before Alexca was born. Petit Frere has started the paperwork to become a Mexican citizen.

Petit Frere's daughter arrived in Tijuana nearly five months pregnant, three years after Petit Frere. Petit Frere said, "As a Mexican citizen, she will have more opportunities." She also said, "There are a lot of children in Tijuana who are 6, 7, 8 years old now who are Mexican and their parents who are Haitian did not have legal status but now have become permanent residents because their children were born here."

Petit Frere fled Haiti in 2019, traveling from Brazil and through the Panamanian jungle to Mexico. She was born in French Saint Martin, which does not offer automatic birthright citizenship, and was deported to Haiti at age six with her mother. Petit Frere is fluent in Spanish, is obtaining a degree in social work, and is a community organizer with the Haitian Bridge Alliance. She has three nieces who were born in Brazil and received automatic citizenship there. At least 10 percent of arriving Haitian women in Mexico in 2021 were pregnant, according to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration. Tens of thousands of Haitians currently live in Mexico.

In 2007, the Dominican Electoral Council ordered the denial of citizenship to all children born to parents without legal status. A Dominican court applied this decision retroactively to 1929 in 2013. More than a decade after the court decision, up to 130,000 people remained stateless in the Dominican Republic, according to the Center for Migration Studies of New York. The Dominican Republic passed a law in 2014 to address the court's prior decision on citizenship.