After unfavorable SCOTUS ruling, Trump targets birth tourism by other means

After the Supreme Court ruled against an attempt to redefine birthright citizenship to limit its application, the Trump administration has launched a campaign to target birth tourism across the United States. Birth tourism is the practice of traveling to another country with the primary purpose of giving birth there, so the child gains citizenship.

In its latest act, the administration suspended a federal program that permitted Chinese citizens to travel without a visa to the Northern Mariana Islands for up to 14 days. 

The islands, which are a U.S. territory and thus confer citizenship benefits upon people born there, had become a hotbed of Chinese birth tourism. The long-running industry opened the door for potentially more than a million Chinese babies born there to secure American citizenship, according to recent estimates reported previously by Just the News. 

Lee: "America is not a nursery" to "steal citizenship"

The Department of Homeland Security published a notice in the Federal Register on Monday suspending the program, which allowed pre-screened Chinese nationals to visit the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) for up to two weeks without a visa. The department cited concerns that the program could facilitate birth tourism, espionage and illegal onward travel to nearby Guam, Just the News reported.

The now-suspended arrangement was formulated in 2009 under the Obama Administration, under which Chinese and Russian visitors could access the islands under the Department of Homeland Security's parole authorities. Parole is a discretionary power that lets the government admit a foreign national without a visa. Because the islands are a U.S. territory, a child born there to a parolee is a U.S. citizen at birth, just as if the child had been born in the states.

Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee, who pressed DHS to end the program, celebrated the suspension.

"I'm very pleased to report that [Mullin] at DHS just closed Joe Biden's loophole for Chinese birth tourism for which we sounded the alarm earlier this year," Lee wrote on X, referring to Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "America is not a nursery for the [Chinese Communist Party] to steal citizenship."

Lee was one of four Republican senators, along with Florida's Rick Scott, Texas's John Cornyn and Louisiana's Bill Cassidy, who warned the administration earlier this year that the program posed national security risks and urged that it be shut down.

Senators call program "A veritable cottage industry"

In a January letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the senators called the parole program a “lingering policy” that “has opened the United States to significant security threats by creating a veritable cottage industry of Chinese nationals giving birth in the CNMI and gaining access to U.S. citizenship.”

Births to visiting Chinese mothers on the islands rose from fewer than 10 per year in 2009 to almost 600 in 2018, the senators wrote. According to research by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer, more than 70% of newborns on the islands are born to Chinese birth tourists using the visa-free policy, Just the News previously reported.

The Mariana Islands case is only one piece of a far larger phenomenon. In his book The Invisible Coup, Schweizer and his research team, citing Chinese government data and independent assessments, estimated that between 750,000 and 1.5 million Chinese nationals obtained U.S. citizenship through birth tourism over the last 13 years.

“Now our federal government does not keep track of birthright citizenship numbers, so we literally have no idea how many people are doing this, but the Chinese government has looked at this and come to their own estimates and their belief is, over the last 13 years, every year, roughly 100,000 Chinese nationals have done this, which means you're looking at more than a million, and think about this, more than a million American citizens,” Schweizer previously told the Just the News, No Noise TV show in January.

“These are children that are born in the United States, primarily to the Chinese elite. They then go back to China, where they're raised. They go to Chinese schools. They're part of the CCP establishment,” Schweizer said. “When they turn 18, they can now vote [in the United States]. They can now get government jobs.”

Schweizer argued at the time that the scale of the practice should weigh on the Supreme Court as it considered President Trump's Jan. 20, 2025 executive order, which sought to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S. to parents who are in the country illegally or only temporarily.

The administration's legal theory centered on a single phrase in the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause, which grants citizenship to “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” 

The administration argued that the children of illegal immigrants and temporary visitors, including birth tourists, are not fully "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States, while opponents relied on the high court's 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which held that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen by birth. 

The Supreme Court struck down the order in June, rejecting the administration's reading of the amendment. Faced with the unfavorable ruling, the administration shifted to confronting birth tourism from different angles: by determining who gets into the country and on what terms.  

Rubio: "Using every tool at our disposal"

Trump moved quickly after the ruling. On Aug. 6, he signed two executive orders aimed at narrowing birthright citizenship and ending birth tourism without directly contradicting the court’s ruling.

“We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision. So we're making adjustments because it's very unfair.”

The first order expanded the categories of U.S.-born children who would be ineligible for automatic citizenship to include children of “alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments.”

The second order directed the State Department to issue rules and guidance to stop birth tourism. Existing State Department rules already bar foreigners from obtaining tourist visas “for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States.” These restrictions, however, have not always been enforced. 

The State Department followed through on that order in September. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new visa restriction policy under the Immigration and Nationality Act targeting “individuals who knowingly engage in, have engaged in, or facilitate birth tourism to the United States.”

The policy seeks to address more than just expectant mothers seeking to travel to the United States by targeting the owners, operators and managers of commercial birth tourism networks, visa "fixers" who coach applicants to commit fraud, and foreign medical providers who support the practice, Just the News reported. 

“The Trump administration is using every tool at our disposal to defend the integrity of U.S. citizenship, protect American public benefits and U.S. taxpayers from exploitation, and safeguard our national security,” Rubio said in a statement.

“By restricting visa issuance of those who both engage in and profit from this fraud, we are sending a clear message: The United States will not allow foreigners to exploit our immigration system and violate the sanctity of U.S. citizenship,” he added.