ICE Intensifies Crackdown on Rising U.S. Birth Tourism Schemes with New Initiative

The administration under President Trump is gearing up to take action against groups accused of aiding pregnant women in falsifying visa applications to ensure their babies, born on American soil, automatically gain U.S. citizenship. This issue has been a cornerstone in Trump’s broader agenda to challenge and potentially limit birthright citizenship.

According to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has instructed its agents to concentrate their efforts on a new operation dubbed the “Birth Tourism Initiative.”

This initiative aims to dismantle networks that allegedly assist pregnant women from other countries in traveling to the U.S. with the intention of giving birth, thereby securing American citizenship for their newborns.

Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has vigorously pursued policies to curb both legal and illegal immigration. The administration has frequently cited the phenomenon of birth tourism to bolster its case for reforming automatic citizenship laws for those born within U.S. borders.

“Unregulated birth tourism imposes a hefty burden on taxpayers and poses a threat to our national security,” stated White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. She also noted that the majority of countries do not grant automatic citizenship by birth.

While the Department of Homeland Security refrained from commenting on any current investigations, it acknowledged being aware of networks that facilitate birth tourism to the United States.

“While the act of giving birth in the United States is not unlawful, DHS remains focused ​on identifying and addressing potential violations of federal law associated with these activities,” a spokesperson said.

No US law outright bars birth tourism, but a federal regulation implemented in 2020 during Trump’s first term prohibits using temporary tourist and business visas for the primary purpose of obtaining US citizenship for a newborn. People who engage in birth tourism schemes could be prosecuted for fraud or other related crimes.

There are no ​official figures tallying the number of foreigners who come to the US for the explicit purpose of giving birth and obtaining citizenship for their children, or the cost to taxpayers.

The Center for ​Immigration Studies, which supports lower levels of immigration, estimated in an analysis in 2020 that between 20,000-25,000 mothers came to the US for birth tourism in a year-long period between 2016-2017.

There were 3.6 million births in ‌the US ⁠in 2025 and birth tourism likely represents a fraction of total births.

Republicans have highlighted allegations of birth tourism as a reason to limit access to US citizenship, which has long been conferred at birth under an amendment to the Constitution.

Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office that instructed US agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the US if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident, a sharp break from legal precedent spanning more than a century.

Multiple federal judges blocked the order, sending the case to the Supreme Court ​for oral arguments last week. Solicitor ​General D. John Sauer, representing the Trump ⁠administration, said automatic citizenship had encouraged “a sprawling industry of birth tourism.”

Sauer said the promise of citizenship for those born in the US had encouraged thousands of people from “potentially hostile nations” to come to give birth, “creating a whole generation of American citizens abroad with no meaningful ties to the ​United States.”

ICE’s new birth tourism effort — spearheaded by its Homeland Security Investigations arm — aims to surface cases of fraud, ​but it is unclear how ⁠many cases they might find.

“HSI is advancing efforts to protect the integrity of US immigration and identification systems, specifically targeting fraudulent activities associated with birth tourism schemes,” the email said.

The agency said it would seek to disrupt “fraud, financial crimes, and organized facilitation networks that exploit lawful immigration processes.”

In one federal case in 2019, more than a dozen people were charged in a scheme to operate “birth houses” in Southern ⁠California that ​catered to wealthy women from China.

In the case — billed by ICE at the time as the first US prosecution ​against birth tourism — Chinese national Dongyuan Li pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with the scheme. She was sentenced to 10 months in prison and released in December 2019.

Another Chinese national, Chao “Edwin” Chen, was sentenced to three years ​in prison in 2020 but had already fled the US for China, according to ICE.