State Department launches new birth tourism prevention task force initiative

FILE PHOTO: Spring Garden Tours take place on the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, April 18, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)

(The Center Square) – The U.S. State Department has launched a new Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force.

The initiative was launched less than a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end birth tourism and protect the meaning of U.S. citizenship.

“Birth tourism operators use deceptive advertisements and inducements to entice foreign nationals to travel to the United States for the purpose of giving birth on American soil,” the order states. “They promise citizenship; access to public benefits; and short-term stays in specialized facilities, hotels or rentals, but often fail to deliver on these promises. These operators coach their clients to misrepresent the purpose and duration of their travel to consular and border officials to obtain visas authorizing entry into the United States.

“Failure to appropriately combat these schemes has resulted in thriving industries around the world that profit by enabling the evasion of American immigration laws to obtain citizenship and other immigration benefits for foreign visitors, and the exploitation of the women who travel here for purposes of giving birth.”

The order directs the departments of State and Homeland Security to implement policies to protect the integrity of the immigration system.

The new State Department task force will prioritize identifying examples of birth tourism and dismantling criminal networks. The focus is global, involving evaluating travel histories of individuals coming to the U.S. from around the world. Consequences involve visa revocation, prosecution, deportation and being barred from the U.S.

“Citizenship is not a commodity to be acquired through calculated exploitation and evasion of the immigration laws. Foreign nationals who abuse the visa system, and those who help them do so, may lose their visa, their access, and their future in the United States. This is only the beginning,” the State Department said.

The new task force initiative comes after the State Department has already rescinded the visas of more than 175,000 people. Most were rescinded for a range of visa fraud abuse, including birth tourism, The Center Square reported.

A U.S. embassy in North Africa revoked more than 100 visas for “‘birth tourist’ parents who came to the United States primarily to give birth so their children would get U.S. citizenship,” the State Department said.

Overall, more than 600 birth tourism visas have already been revoked under Secretary Marco Rubio, the agency said.

Birth tourism facilitators “market themselves as doulas, midwives, or wellness advocates while openly advertising ‘birth in the U.S.’ services, visa coaching, and hospital arrangements,” the State Department says. “Some forge medical documents or coach clients to conceal their true travel purpose and avoid paying hospital bills, with online marketing promising clients ‘automatic citizenship’ and ‘a future without borders.’”

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott directed a statewide initiative to end birth tourism. State agencies also launched investigations into medical facilities located in border communities that were advertising to women overseas to give birth in Texas. One of the facilities admitted that it had been advertising “HavemybabyinTEXAS.com” to The Center Square.

The State Department is doing more than just revoking visas, it’s also working to root out fraud. Its Bureau of Consular Affairs Task Force and consular officers at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world are “exposing widespread patterns of deception,” it says. They’ve uncovered patterns of visa applicants circumventing laws to obtain U.S. citizenship “for their children – and potentially for themselves in the future.”

The agency cited examples of individuals and couples who reportedly lied on their visa applications that they were coming to the U.S. on vacation but instead came to give birth.

However, well-coordinated criminal birth tourism networks have been exposed by federal investigators related to vias fraud, welfare fraud and human trafficking nationwide. Major cases are being prosecuted from California to Texas to the Northern Mariana Islands, The Center Square reported.

Trump’s executive order came nearly six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment applies to children who are born in the U.S. by mothers who are in the country illegally. The ruling was seen as “a missed opportunity to restore the original meaning of the 14th Amendment,” Abbott said, The Center Square reported.

Restricting birthright citizenship has historically been bipartisan, although Congress has failed to act. In 1993, former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-NV, proposed the Immigration Stabilization Act to impose statutory limitations on automatic birthright citizenship, applying U.S. citizenship only to children born to mothers who were either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents at the time.