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ICE launches new effort to uncover US ‘birth tourism schemes’

The operation targets fraud, financial crimes and organized facilitation networks, while officials say no U.S. law outright bars birth tourism.

  • On Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered agents nationwide to prioritize a new Birth Tourism Initiative targeting organized networks that facilitate travel for foreign nationals to give birth in the United States.
  • President Donald Trump's administration has used birth tourism as a rationale for restricting birthright citizenship after taking office in January 2025 to reduce overall immigration.
  • White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly stated the practice 'poses a tremendous cost to taxpayers and threatens our national security.' The Center for Immigration Studies estimated between 20,000 and 25,000 mothers visited the United States for birth tourism annually between 2016 and 2017.
  • Federal agents will leverage 2020 regulations prohibiting temporary tourist visas for citizenship purposes, targeting what the agency described as 'fraud, financial crimes, and organized facilitation networks that exploit lawful immigration processes.'
  • In 2019, federal prosecutors charged more than a dozen people operating 'birth houses' in Southern California catering to wealthy women from China; operator Chao 'Edwin' Chen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2020.
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ReutersReuters
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ICE launches new effort to uncover US ‘birth tourism schemes’

President Donald Trump’s administration plans ​to crack down on networks it says help pregnant women lie on visa applications in order to secure U.S. citizenship for their U.S.-born babies, an issue ‌that Trump has highlighted to justify his attempts to restrict birthright citizenship.

·United Kingdom
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Reuters broke the news in United Kingdom on Friday, April 10, 2026.
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