New ICE Mission Targets Birth Tourism in the U. S.

The U. S. immigration agency has begun a fresh effort to uncover networks that help foreign mothers travel to the United States with the goal of giving birth so their children automatically become citizens. This initiative comes after President Donald Trump’s administration intensified its fight against both legal and illegal immigration, using the idea of birth tourism as a key argument for limiting automatic citizenship. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said that unchecked birth tourism “poses a tremendous cost to taxpayers and threatens our national security. ” She noted that most countries do not grant citizenship simply by being born on their soil. While no U. S. law outright bans birth tourism, a 2020 regulation prohibits using tourist or business visas solely to obtain citizenship for a newborn. Violators can face fraud charges and other penalties. There are no official statistics on how many foreigners enter the U. S. for this purpose, but a 2020 study by the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that between 20, 000 and 25, 000 mothers traveled to America for birth tourism during a single year in the mid‑2010s. In 2025, the country recorded 3. 6 million births, so the number of birth‑tourism cases is a small fraction of total deliveries.

Trump’s first executive order on his inauguration day directed federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U. S. if neither parent was an American citizen or legal permanent resident. This marked a sharp departure from a century of precedent. The order was later blocked by several federal judges and sent to the Supreme Court for review. ICE’s new program, led by its Homeland Security Investigations division, aims to expose fraud and disrupt organized networks that exploit lawful immigration processes. The agency’s email described its goal as protecting the integrity of U. S. immigration and identification systems by targeting fraudulent activities associated with birth tourism. In 2019, ICE prosecuted a group that ran “birth houses” in Southern California, catering to wealthy Chinese women. One defendant, Dongyuan Li, pleaded guilty and served ten months in prison before her release in December 2019. Another defendant, Chao “Edwin” Chen, was sentenced to three years in 2020 but had already fled back to China. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the Department of Justice have not responded to requests for comment. The new initiative reflects a broader political push to limit birthright citizenship and curb perceived abuses of the U. S. immigration system.

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