The Department of State has established a Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force in alignment with President Trump’s recent order on the subject.
“As President Trump has made clear, citizenship is not a commodity to be acquired through the calculated exploitation of U.S. immigration laws,” the State Department said in a fact sheet. “The Department of State is working closely with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to combat birth tourism and protect the integrity of the U.S. immigration system.”
The task force will review the actions of visa holders and take steps to revoke the visas of those engaging in or facilitating birth tourism. More than 600 visas of foreign nationals around the world have already faced visa revocations from participation in birth tourism schemes.
“American citizenship is not for sale,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “But elaborate birth tourism rings are profiting off the exploitation of America’s laws- coaching foreigners to defraud the U.S. visa system, arranging travel and housing, and even forging documents, all to enable foreign nationals to obtain citizenship for their children.”
The DOJ has also taken measures to prevent birth tourism schemes from materializing. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald issued a memo on the matter to Department of Justice employees, writing that the American immigration system is “exploited each year by thousands of foreigners who travel to the United States under false pretenses to give birth and secure citizenship for their child.”
The memo declared that the DOJ will “investigate and hold accountable those who engage in this unlawful conduct, as well as those who solicit and sell these criminal services to others.” It noted that the Department of Homeland Security will “prioritize the investigation and prosecution of birth tourism schemes.”
