The Trump administration is using visa enforcement to target ‘birth tourism’, an alleged scheme utilized by foreign nationals to obtain visitor visas for the primary purpose of giving birth in the US and securing American citizenship for their unborn children. The administration recently announced that it disrupted ‘a sophisticated birth tourism network’ in West Africa involving more than 100 foreign nationals utilizing false documents and ‘fixers’ to get themselves visas to go to the US to give birth so their children would be born on US soil and treated as American citizens.

Efforts to Combat Birth Tourism

The effort comes as Trump has renewed his long-running criticism of birthright citizenship, including through a 2025 executive order seeking to narrow who is automatically treated as a US citizen at birth. It also builds on a first-term Trump administration rule from 2020 that instructed consular officers to deny visitor visas to foreign nationals believed to be traveling to the US primarily to give birth and obtain American citizenship for their children.

Federation for American Immigration Reform’s Ira Mehlman noted that visa fraud is ‘a significant issue’, pointing out it is a problem even outside the framework of birth tourism. ‘The prospect of birthright citizenship is undeniably an inducement for people to commit visa fraud,’ Mehlman said. ‘Birth tourism would not exist otherwise.’ Mehlman urged Congress to do more to enhance vetting of visa applicants, prosecute those who commit fraud and put an end to birth tourism.

Original reporting: Fox News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.