Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against a Houston-area “birth tourism” scheme that is allegedly responsible for more than a thousand American-born babies.
For nearly twenty years, the De’Ai Postpartum Care Center has served as a “birth tourism” entity marketed toward Chinese clients through social media platforms and websites. The company also teaches clients how to navigate the immigration system and bypass policies when seeking visas. According to Paxton’s office, the coaching includes encouraging Chinese nationals to withhold the fact that the primary purpose of their travel to the U.S. is to give birth.
The lawsuit states that tourist visas cannot be issued for the purpose of giving birth. “This is an unlawful scheme that perpetuates fraud on the government and violates Texas law. And Defendants know this,” the filing reads. “Indeed, just last week, Defendants posted a video to TikTok acknowledging that the federal government is ‘strictly’ policing birth tourism and alerting Chinese women that ‘applying after pregnancy can easily lead to [] refusal.'”
“America is for Americans, not foreigners trying to cheat the system to claim citizenship,” Paxton said in a statement. “The Center’s scheme not only facilitated an invasion of Texas, but it also involved shielding and facilitating violations of immigration law. Birthright citizenship is a scam that threatens national security, and I will do everything in my power to stop unlawful ‘birth tourism’ schemes like this one.”
A recent study from Pew Research detailed that 320,000 U.S. births in 2023, or about 9% of all babies born that year, came from unauthorized immigrants or mothers with temporary legal status.
Of the 320,000 babies born, about 260,000 would not have qualified for birthright citizenship had Trump’s order been in effect. Of those, 245,000 babies were born to mothers who were illegal immigrants or not lawful permanent residents, and about 15,000 babies were born to mothers with legal temporary status and fathers who were not citizens or lawful permanent residents, Pew Research explained.
