Editorial illustration
The Justice Department isn’t backing down despite the Supreme Court’s ruling against President Trump’s birthright citizenship order. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a new crackdown on so-called “birth tourism” operations that exploit American immigration laws for profit. The announcement came just hours after the high court’s 5-4 decision upholding automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil, even to parents here illegally or on temporary visas. Colin McDonald, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement and the administration’s designated “fraud czar,” directed federal prosecutors to zealously investigate and prosecute those who fraudulently exploit the immigration system. The criminal schemes often begin with false visa applications where pregnant women lie about the purpose or duration of their travel to the United States. McDonald highlighted several recent prosecutions that demonstrate the scope of the problem. In 2024, a husband-and-wife team running “USA Happy Baby” were each sentenced to 41 months in prison for operating a birth tourism business catering to Chinese nationals, charging clients tens of thousands of dollars while helping them fraudulently obtain U.S. visas. Another operator, Ibrahim Aksakal, received 27 months for running a scheme out of New York that advertised on Turkish-language social media and instructed women on how to conceal their pregnancies from immigration officials. Perhaps most alarming was the case of Chao “Edwin” Chen, whose “You Win USA” business employed 100 people across the U.S. and China and helped more than 500 customers successfully travel to America to give birth, charging as much as $80,000 per client. Chen was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison. The U.S. government doesn’t currently track birth tourism numbers, but estimates suggest between 26,000 and 33,000 babies are born annually to women on tourist visas, with hundreds of thousands more born to illegal aliens or temporary visa holders. Blanche called birth tourism a “booming industry” and made the administration’s position crystal clear. If your intent in coming here while pregnant is to have a child that’s a United States citizen, that’s a violation of American law, and the DOJ intends to stop it. The message is unmistakable even if the Supreme Court won’t fix the birthright citizenship loophole, the Trump administration will use every tool available to shut down the fraudsters profiting from it.
About The Author
