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The Justice Department on Tuesday pledged to crack down on so-called “birth tourism” after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s executive order outlawing birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and US visitors.
Colin McDonald, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement, directed federal prosecutors to “zealously protect the sanctity of United States citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system” by traveling to the country under “false pretenses” to give birth.
“The criminal laws of the United States already prohibit conduct inherent to so many of these so-called ‘birth tourism’ schemes,” McDonald, the administration’s “fraud czar,” wrote in a memo to DOJ employees. “For example, many such schemes start with a false visa application – with lies about the purpose or duration of one’s travel to the United States.”
McDonald included three examples of birth tourism schemes the DOJ has prosecuted in recent years.
In 2024, Michael Wei Yueh Liu and Jing Dong – a husband-and-wife team – were each sentenced to 41 months in prison after being accused of running a birth tourism business that catered to Chinese nationals. Their company – “USA Happy Baby” — charged clients tens of thousands of dollars and assisted them in fraudulently obtaining US visas, according to McDonald.
The fraud czar also highlighted the 2022 case of Ibrahim Aksakal, who was convicted of healthcare and wire fraud conspiracy charges and sentenced to 27 months in prison. Operating out of New York, Aksakal allegedly advertised a birth tourism scheme on Turkish-language social media pages and instructed women on how to conceal their pregnancies.
Finally, the DOJ official pointed out the 2020 case of Chao “Edwin” Chen, who allegedly boasted that his 100 employees in the US and China had helped more than 500 customers successfully travel to the US to give birth. Chen’s “You Win USA” business charged customers as much as $80,000. He was sentenced to 37 months in prison for operating the “large-scale birth tourism scheme,” McDonald wrote.
The US government does not currently track the number of babies born to birth tourists.
The Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that has opposed several of President Trump’s immigration policies, estimates that 26,000 babies born in the US annually could be attributed to birth tourists.
The conservative Center for Immigration Studies estimates that birth tourism results in 33,000 births to women on tourist visas annually, and the think tank notes that “hundreds of thousands more are born to mothers who are illegal aliens or present on temporary visas.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called birth tourism a “booming industry” at a press conference Wednesday.
“Everybody should agree that it’s a violation of our laws if your intent in coming here, if you’re pregnant, is to have a child that’s a United States citizen,” Blanche said.
“We’re focused on stopping that, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
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