Focus on Birth Tourism: Trump Administration’s New Initiative

The Trump administration is tightening its grip on networks purportedly assisting pregnant women in submitting inaccurate information on visa applications to secure U.S. citizenship for their newborns. This issue has been a focal point for Trump, emphasizing the need to restrict birthright citizenship.

An internal email, reviewed by Reuters, revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has instructed law enforcement across the nation to concentrate on a new “Birth Tourism Initiative.”

This operation targets networks that facilitate travel for foreign nationals aiming to give birth in the U.S. and obtain citizenship for their children, according to the department.

Following his inauguration in January 2025, President Trump initiated strong measures to curtail both legal and illegal immigration. The administration has used the argument of birth tourism to support its push against the practice of automatically granting citizenship to children born in the U.S.

White House press secretary Anna Kelly remarked, “Unrestricted birth tourism places significant burdens on taxpayers and poses risks to national security.” She also emphasized that many nations do not automatically confer citizenship at birth.

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is not commenting on ongoing investigations, it acknowledges the existence of networks facilitating travel for birth tourism.

DHS representatives noted, “Giving birth in the U.S. is not illegal; however, we are focused on identifying potential violations of federal law associated with these activities.”

Currently, there’s no comprehensive U.S. law banning birth tourism outright, though certain federal regulations exist. In 2020, during Trump’s first term, temporary visitor visas intended mainly for securing citizenship for newborns were prohibited, and individuals involved in coordinating maternity travel could face fraud charges.

In 2019, approximately a dozen individuals were indicted in a case related to “birthing houses” aimed at wealthy Chinese women.

Statistics on the number of foreign nationals visiting the U.S. specifically to give birth are not officially recorded, nor is there a clear estimate on the associated taxpayer costs.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reduced immigration, reported that an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 mothers traveled to the United States for birth tourism during the 2016-2017 period.

With 3.6 million anticipated births in the U.S. in 2025, birth tourism is expected to comprise a small percentage of that total.

Republicans have pointed to birth tourism claims as a rationale for restricting access to U.S. citizenship, a right long established by a constitutional amendment.

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order instructing that citizenship should be denied to children born in the U.S. if their parents are not citizens or lawful residents, a decision that breaks over a century of legal precedent.

However, multiple federal judges have blocked this order, bringing the matter to the Supreme Court for oral arguments recently. Attorney General D. John Sauer, representing the administration, stated that automatic citizenship promotes a “disorganized industry of birth tourism.”

Sauer argued that the promise of citizenship has prompted thousands to give birth from “potentially hostile countries,” leading to an entire generation of Americans abroad lacking substantial ties to the U.S.

ICE’s new initiative, spearheaded by Homeland Security Investigations, aims to uncover fraud cases, although it remains uncertain how many cases will actually be identified.

The email from ICE affirmed its commitment to safeguarding the integrity of the U.S. immigration system, specifically targeting fraud related to maternity travel planning.

In 2019, a federal lawsuit charged several individuals with operating “birthing houses” in Southern California for affluent women from China. In this notable case, Chinese national Li Dongyuan admitted to federal charges and was sentenced to 10 months in prison, later released in December 2019. Another associate, Chao “Edwin” Chen, received a three-year prison sentence in 2020 but had already fled to China, according to ICE.