(The Center Square) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued a Houston area “Chinese birth tourism” center alleging it’s exploiting birthright citizenship by “unlawfully facilitating the invasion of Chinese nationals into Texas for the sole purpose of giving birth.”

The lawsuit was filed in the District Court for Fort Bend County and names De’Ai Post Partum Care Center, Lin Suling and Lai Wan Lin-Chan as defendants. It alleges the center is violating the Texas Penal Code, Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and constitutes a public nuisance. It also alleges the defendants are committing deceptive trade practices, tampering with governmental records, committing unlawful harboring and concealment among other violations.

It asks the court to shut down the center and fine it $1 million.

The center has been operating in Texas for more than two decades, and critics questioned the timing of the lawsuit as Paxton is running for U.S. Senate. The majority of that time Paxton served in elected office as a state lawmaker and as attorney general.

Paxton has repeatedly claimed the Chinese are facilitating an “invasion” in Texas. This is after he for years refused to issue a legal opinion on invasion after being called to do so by multiple officials, The Center Square exclusively reported.

At the height of the border crisis, 55 county judges led the initiative to declare an invasion. To date, Paxton still has not issued a legal opinion on invasion. Doing so would have helped Texas in multiple lawsuits as well as the Trump administration, critics argue. It would have also established a legal precedent that only the former attorney general of Arizona has set.

“America is for Americans, not foreigners trying to cheat the system to claim citizenship,” Paxton said when filing the lawsuit. “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.”

Paxton said the center “marketed birth-related services primarily to Chinese clients through popular Chinese social media platforms and websites, … coaches clients on how to navigate immigration procedures and evade immigration laws when seeking visas and citizenship for themselves and their child.”

The alleged coaching includes encouraging Chinese nationals to illegally enter or remain in the U.S. by concealing their primary purpose of travel. Federal law prohibits visas from being granted solely to give birth in the U.S.

The center operates at least four properties in the Houston area, including in Houston, Sugar Land, Richmond and Rosenberg, according to the lawsuit. Each property “typically hosts multiple families at one time, facilitating up to twenty births per day,” Paxton says.

The lawsuit points to a TikTok video the center posted “acknowledging that the federal government is ‘strictly’ policing birth tourism and alerting Chinese women that ‘applying after pregnancy can easily lead to refusal.’ To overcome this prohibition, and avoid detection, Defendants recommended that women apply for their tourist visas ‘before pregnancy.’”

The lawsuit was filed after Republicans in Congress sounded the alarm about Chinse birth tourism two years ago, including in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and California, The Center Square reported.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has also long argued for ending birthright citizenship by amending the Constitution.

President Donald Trump has sought to end the practice with the issue now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The term, “birthright citizenship,” stems from Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, hasn’t always been applied equally. Native Americans born in the U.S. weren’t granted citizenship status until 1924.

The Supreme Court has only ruled on one federal case related to birthright citizenship, in 1898. The court held that a child born in San Francisco to legal Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen. The case didn’t address the issue of children born in the U.S. to illegal foreign nationals or birth tourism participants involved in visa fraud.