ICE expands fight against ‘birth tourism’ and targets possible fraud

US President Donald Trump makes a gesture as he disembarks from Marine One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on April 10, 2026 JIM WATSON / AFP President Donald Trump’s administration plans to step up enforcement against networks that the government says help pregnant women lie on visa applications to secure US citizenship for their US-born babies. In an internal email sent on Thursday (9) and reviewed by Reuters, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ordered investigative agents across the country to focus on a new “Birth Tourism Initiative” aimed at exposing cases of fraud. “HSI is advancing efforts to protect the integrity of the U.S. immigration and identification systems by specifically targeting fraudulent activity associated with birth tourism schemes,” the email said. The agency stated that it will seek to dismantle “fraud, financial crimes and organized facilitation networks that exploit legal immigration processes”. See the videos that are trending on g1 Trump, a Republican, began an aggressive offensive to reduce legal and illegal immigration after taking office in January 2025. His administration has used the threat of birth tourism as justification for trying to restrict the practice of granting automatic citizenship to children born on American soil. “Rampant birth tourism represents a tremendous cost to taxpayers and threatens our national security,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement, adding that most nations do not offer automatic citizenship at birth. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declined to comment on ongoing investigations. “While the act of giving birth in the United States is not illegal, DHS remains focused on identifying and addressing potential violations of federal law associated with these activities,” a spokesperson said. No US law explicitly bans birth tourism, but a federal regulation implemented in 2020, during Trump’s first term, prohibits the use of temporary tourist and business visas for the primary purpose of obtaining US citizenship for a newborn. People who participate in birth tourism schemes may be prosecuted for fraud or other related crimes. ‘Birth tourism’ as a justification for limiting citizenship There are no official numbers that count the number of foreigners who travel to the USA with the explicit purpose of giving birth and obtaining citizenship for their children. The Center for Immigration Studies, which supports lower levels of immigration, estimated in a 2020 analysis that between 20,000 and 25,000 mothers traveled to the U.S. for birth tourism in a one-year period between 2016 and 2017. There were 3.6 million births in the U.S. in 2025, and birth tourism likely represents a fraction of total births. Trump’s moves against ‘passport for foreign babies’ Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office directing U.S. agencies not to recognize the citizenship of children born in the country if neither parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident — a drastic departure from legal precedent that has stood for more than a century. Several federal judges blocked the order, sending the case to the Supreme Court for oral arguments last week. U.S. Attorney General D. John Sauer, representing the Trump administration, said automatic citizenship has encouraged “a booming birth tourism industry.” Sauer said the promise of citizenship to those born in the U.S. encouraged thousands of people from “potentially hostile nations” to go and give birth, “creating an entire generation of U.S. citizens abroad without significant ties to the United States.” Illustrative image Renkgezgini/Pexels

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