DOJ Takes Aim at Birth Tourism After Supreme Court Upholds Birthright Citizenship
“[W]e will bring illegal birth tourism to an end and those responsible to justice.”
On Tuesday morning, the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship in a 5-4 decision, striking down President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to limit automatic citizenship to children born in the United States with at least one parent who is either a U.S. citizen or a legal resident.
In response to the decision, Professor Jacobson wrote, “[Chief Justice John] Roberts’ Opinion, joined by [Associate Justice Amy Coney] Barrett and the liberal block, fully embraces birthright citizenship for all. Children born to women illegally or temporarily in the country ‘are citizens at birth.'”
Ultimately, the only permanent solution may be a constitutional amendment clarifying that birthright citizenship does not extend to the children of those who are in the country illegally or only temporarily. Given the Constitution’s demanding amendment process — which requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states — that outcome appears highly unlikely in today’s deeply polarized political climate.
With a constitutional amendment all but out of reach, the Trump administration’s most practical option is to aggressively enforce the laws already on the books against birth tourism and the visa fraud that often accompanies it.
Hours after the Supreme Court announced its decision, Deputy Attorney General Colin McDonald issued a memorandum to Department of Justice employees citing several examples of “birth tourism schemes,” in which foreign nationals have exploited birthright citizenship to secure U.S. citizenship for the children of paying clients.
The memo read (in part):
The Department of Justice 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. I am directing all United States Attorneys and the Criminal Division to work with the Department of Homeland Security to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of birth tourism schemes.
The Department of Justice will zealously protect the sanctity of United States citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system. Together, we will bring illegal birth tourism to an end and those responsible to justice.
Memorandum for DOJ Employees on Prosecution of Fraudulent Birth Tourism Schemes from Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/hoilA5o2TE
— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) June 30, 2026
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche elaborated on the DOJ’s efforts to crack down on birth tourism during a Wednesday afternoon news conference. He said the agency would be “focusing our prosecutors and our law enforcement partners on birthing tourism and it’s a booming industry.”
He told reporters:
There’s more that DHS can do and the federal government can do in the visa process and the application process to try to minimize or limit the opportunity of folks coming here not to visit, not to do what they say they’re going to do on their Visa, but just to have a baby that can be a U.S. citizen.
So everybody should agree that it’s a violation of our laws if your intent in coming here is to have a child to become a United States citizen. … So what we have to do at the Department of Justice is to make sure our agents and our HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] agents that we work with and the FBI are focused on stopping that and that’s what we’re going to do.
AG Todd Blanche, in response to the Supreme Court ruling on Birthright Citizenship, says they’re Cracking down on Birth Tourism schemes
He says in addition to this, all related agencies involved will be doing everything they can to minimize and limit those coming here to take…
— Al Tesauro (@AlTesauro1776) July 1, 2026
As McDonald noted in his memo, “the benefits of U.S. citizenship require little explanation.” If they did, there would be no market for birth tourism. The promise of American citizenship has long been valuable enough that some foreign nationals are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and travel halfway around the world to obtain it for their children.
Beyond the immediate immigration concerns, birth tourism also raises potential national security questions. A U.S.-born child receives citizenship at birth and, decades later, may be eligible for positions involving sensitive government, defense, or technology work. Most will never pose a threat, of course. But it is not difficult to imagine hostile foreign governments, particularly the Chinese Communist Party, viewing birth tourism as one more way to gain long-term access inside the United States.
“U.S.-style birthright citizenship is uncommon around the world,” according to the Pew Research Center. The organization recently reported that most countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East instead tie citizenship to a parent’s nationality or legal residency. Only 32 other countries — most of them located in the western hemisphere — have laws that grant automatic citizenship to nearly everyone born on their soil.
#SCOTUS has upheld birthright citizenship, striking down President Trump’s executive order that sought to end it.
Thirty-two other countries around the world have birthright citizenship laws that are similar to the U.S. pic.twitter.com/Y7ujsJD6G8
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) June 30, 2026
The DOJ’s new crackdown makes clear that the administration has no intention of letting the issue end with Tuesday’s ruling. If the Court has preserved birthright citizenship in its broadest form, then the executive branch appears determined to use every tool at its disposal to protect U.S. national security interests, enforce the law, and keep Americans safe. The DOJ will target the fraud and abuse that have grown up around birthright citizenship which is both reasonable and necessary. American citizenship is one of the most valuable legal statuses in the world. Protecting it from exploitation should not be controversial.
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Comments
This is very good news. Hopefully it will work. But how does one handle actions like Spain where they plan to automatically grant citizenship to a minimum of 500,000 people? We know the major cities in the US are controlled by Democrats. Can they give automatic citizenship to a pregnant woman who lands in them?
No, because the power of citizenship is controlled (some say usurped) by the federal government.
What I’m more concerned about is the unintended consequences of the passage in Ketanji Brown Jackson’s concurring opinion, stipulating that any baby born in an Olive Garden is automatically a citizen of Italy.
They can give “citizenship” of their city, for whatever that’s worth, but it doesn’t come with US citizenship.
A recent DOJ memo discusses several cases of birth tourism companies being prosecuted. In every one it is mentioned that the owners of the tour firm counseled women as to how to hide their pregnancies from immigration officials — something we discussed yesterday. Now I’m curious as to what advice they have been getting, to see how easy it is to circumvent.
Mandatory pregnancy tests will put a stop to that. Are there any pregnancy tests that don’t require blood?
Those drugstore test kits use yoo-ryne.
This is the exact right response
A modest proposal:
Step 1: EO banning pregnant foreigners from entry unless specially and explicitly authorized in advance. Requires all entering the country to swear that they are not pregnant, and that if they discover they are while on US soil they will depart within 7 days.
Step 2: new regs providing that entering or remaining in the country in violation of (1) is punishible by immediate deportation and permanent bar of reentry for any reason, as well as a nondischargeable fine of $250,000. I.e., giving birth to an anchor baby means you can’t stay and can never return, and you’re hit with a draconian fine.
Step 3: new regs providing that anyone who knowingly aids / abets a violation of (1) or (2) is subject to nondischargeable fines of $500,000 for each person born in the US as a result, plus immediate deportation and permanent bar on reentry if not a US citizen.
No refugee, TPS, or asylum exceptions to any of the foregoing. Those here on green cards, student visas, H1-B visas, etc., must report a pregnancy and get special permission to remain; otherwise (2) applies.
You can’t apply it to green card holders. They’re entitled to have their children here, and those children deserve to be citizens. Even Trump’s struck-down order agreed with that.
If a baby is born in the USA it receives a birth certificate. But in order to leave the USA, it needs a passport. By stretching out the paperwork timeline required to get the baby a passport, the government turns a quick birth trip into an incredibly risky, expensive legal nightmare.
This sounds like a briar patch punishment.
Combine it with the modest proposal set forth above, and you get the following:
Tourist-baby Mom immediately deported, barred permanently for re-entry, fined $250,000 (which likely would not be paid but would be a basis for seizing all assets if she snuck back or delayed deportation.
Tourist baby dad : ditto, but fine is $500,000. Same for any other relatives / advisors in on the scam.
Mom and Dad are being deported. Baby doesn’t have a passport, so cannot leave. CPS takes custody of baby; moves to terminate parental rights on grounds that parents are criminals who cannot return to US and thus are unfit.. Places baby with foster parents who are fast tracked to adopt.
Publish worldwide that this will happen to you if you try birth tourism in the US. Watch how fast the problem withers.
No court would go along with that.
Or a constitutional amendment that simply repeals/removes the birthright clause in Amendment XIV § 1 (“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”) and eliminate birthright citizenship altogether.
Suggested amendment: “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, except Congress shall have the power to enact exclusions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreigners temporarily or illegally present inside the United States”
Nah, don’t give the Congress the power to do dipsquat. Either they won’t, or they’ll seesaw it back and forth like Biden did to border control.
“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” –Thomas Jefferson
TBH the failure to put any weight/meaning to the qualifying phrase ‘and the State where they reside’ seems Cray Cray. The birth tourism kid doesn’t reside in any State. His Parents don’t reside in any State. There’s no physical nexus, no ‘ties to the community’ much less the USA. Some kid born to illegal aliens who’ve been living in the USA ‘in the shadows’ for years has different circumstances (still shouldn’t gain Citizenship) but despite the longer duration the illegal presence is likewise a temporary one b/c they can be arrested/deported any time they get located.
No, “reside” is a way looser term than “domicile” or “citizen.” The homeless people in Los Angeles reside in Los Angeles. The census counts residents, not citizens, meaning it counts a lot of people who really shouldn’t have representation (but it was important back in the slave days).
Remember, this was written in an age when most Americans still believed Washington represented a “federal” government, without yet having twigged to the fact that Lincoln had just destroyed it and replaced it with a “national” government. Pre-Lincoln, being a “citizen’ of a state used to have meaning that it doesn’t have now.
Reside v domicile differentiation is true ish for ‘anchor babies’ but IMO for ‘birth tourism kids’ unimportant. The Mom arrives, gives birth, she and kid go home to wherever Mom lives. That kid doesn’t ‘reside’ in the USA, neither do his Parents nor is there a special circumstance like military service to explain/mitigate. When/if he returns to the USA or.just a US Embassy to get a Passport he has no personal connection to the USA, no personal ties to any locale, nor to the Nation itself.
At least in the 1780s, “reside” was a stronger term than “inhabit”. To be a resident somewhere you had to actually live there. If you were away for a longish period, even though you had the fixed intention to return, you were no longer a resident there, but you were still an inhabitant.
That’s why Congressmen are only required to be “inhabitants” of their home state, while the president is required to be a “resident” of the USA for at least 14 years (though they don’t have to be the most recent 14). They wrote it that way specifically so that a congressman who actually lives in DC but has his legal domicile in HI, i..e that’s where he’s from and where he intends to return when he leaves politics, can still represent HI.
Whereas if someone’s parents took him out of the USA on an extended posting when he was 12, with the intent to return at some indefinite date so they were still legally inhabitants of their home state, he can’t be president until he puts in the remaining 4 years. Or at least that’s how I understand it, based on the records of the Philadelphia convention.
Then he’s not a citizen of any state. He’s a citizen of the USA, and when and if he settles in a state (which is his right) he automatically becomes a citizen of that state until such time as he moves away from it. That’s how that clause was always intended to work.
An amend.ent is not required. Section 5 covers how to address implementation:
“The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
The question is whether the current Congress, or any future Congress will act upon “appropriate legislation”
Absolutely not true. Congress has no power to interpret the constitution for itself; it must defer to the courts’ interpretation. And it can’t use section 5 to “enforce” a provision that the courts say isn’t there. Section 5 can only be used after the courts have determined that a state practice violates the 14A; then and only then, Congress can ban that practice.
See City of Boerne.
If you’re going to try to amend it anyway then why not go the whole hog and make sure children born abroad to US citizens have citizenship by right, and not merely by gift of congress?
“Any person born in the United States to a mother who is a citizen of the United States, or who is a lawful resident of the United States; any person born abroad to a mother who is both a citizen and a resident of the United States; and any person naturalized in the United States, is a citizen of the United States, and (if resident in a state) is a citizen of that state.”
But bear in mind that amending the constitution without broad bipartisan support is basically impossible. In the current political climate I can’t see Democrats signing on to any such amendment. They would probably want to make citizenship like gender — anyone who declares himself to be a US citizen is one, until such time as he changes his mind!
Prosecute the Parents engaged in birth tourism not just for participating in the scheme but for putting the pregnancy at risk by flying in last trimester. Make all international flights off limits to pregnant foreign nationals past 6 months. Limit visa approval to 30 days for pregnant females. Exam by Embassy personnel. Refuse entry at customs to any pregnant female lacking State Dept documentation from Embassy. Return them immediately, no exceptions, bill their Nation for the cost of flight. Any Nation refusing to promptly pay up is banned entry for all their Citizens other than diplomatic personnel. All Citizens of that Nation in the USA at the time of ban must immediately depart. Any Nation refusing to cooperate in receiving these folks gets hit with an economic embargo.
I don’t think you could possibly get a conviction on such a charge. Most doctors won’t agree that flying in the third trimester is such a high risk unless there are aggravating factors. I don’t think any judge would even allow it through to the jury.
Require visas for every country in the world, and make the visa good for only three months m. On the visa require females to answer whether they are pregnant or not, and if yes, then ask them what month they’re in. Do not issue a visa for any female past the first trimester. Also, student visas and H1B visas should have to renewed every three months, with females required to show up personally at a visa office for a pregnancy test. Anyone female pregnant is to be deported.
The concept of ‘dual citizenship’ does not compute for me – you can be loyal to only one nation. If push comes to shove, you will have to choose, so let’s not even start that down that path. Pick one and live with it.
So – when a child is born on US soil, pick one citizenship. Either USA or Honduras or Kenya (or whatever) – but not both. Obviously, a baby can’t select. Parents are likely to select USA – that is why they came here in the first place. But they are not citizens – when the visa expires they go home with their USA child. Now the child is an alien in the home country – but living with parent(s) or guardian(s).
You can control who you give your citizenship to, but you can’t control who other countries give their citizenship to. I believe Israel says that if you’re a Jew, you’re a citizen, no matter where you live. What can another country do about that? De-naturalizing all Jews everywhere seems harsh.
Easy fix with my magic wand (presumption is I have power to solve it) Require any Citizen who actively seeks or accepts foreign Citizenship to surrender their US Citizenship and depart the USA. If foreign Nation X offers it …you don’t have to accept it. If that foreign Nation insists on sending a Passport or citizenship confirmation docs the US Citizen can simply send them to the State Dept and State Dept can tell them to back off. If it becomes a pattern from that foreign Nation or they refuse to ‘back off’ then slap some sanctions on them, escalating the severity until they stop or we eventually turn their foreign Nation into a pile of rubble. The USA should protect its Citizens from harassment and recruitment by foreign powers.
That was the official pretext the USA used to start the War of 1812. The UK didn’t recognize renunciation of its citizenship. The laws of war allowed (and as far as I know still allow) a nation at war to stop neutral ships and search them for its citizens, which it may conscript; the UK did this, which the USA had no problem with, but it took US citizens who used to be UK citizens, on the grounds that their renunciation was not lawful. At the time, the Democrats were itching for an excuse to go to war with the UK, because they liked Napoleon, and because they wanted to do things like invade the Indians’ lands and Canada, and this was their excuse.
No, it doesn’t. Israeli law says that a Jew, or the child or grandchild of a Jew, is entitled to Israeli citizenship as of right; but you still have to apply for it.
There are many countries, though, that do automatically give citizenship to children born abroad to their citizens. I think the USA requires the parents to apply for it on the child’s behalf before the child turns 18, but many countries don’t do that, it’s just automatic. This used to be a problem for children of Greek and Italian parents, because if they ever decided to go visit their parents’ homeland they were arrested at the airport for draft evasion and taken straight to the army! They fixed that problem, but these children are still automatically Greek or Italian citizens.
I think it is sufficient to say if one holds dual citizenship, he can not run for any public office while maintaining dual citizenship.
That too would require a constitutional amendment. If you’re already amending it, by all means you can try to stick that provision in as well. But amending the constitution without broad bipartisan support is practically impossible.
Chiina is the greatest offender of birthright citizenship. It has an entire operation focused on getting pregnant Chinese women into the states to give birth — usually in CA, of course. And it’s been going on for over a decade. Yes, DOJ needs to investigate and shut down these Chinese operations. Peter Schweizer covers this pretty thoroughly in The Invisible Coup.
I recently read that they’re actually using Saipan, and that’s much more easily fixed. Children born in Saipan don’t have citizenship by right of the 14th amendment, but only by statute. Congress made that statute and it can amend it to provide that children born there are only citizens if the mother is one. The actual Saipanese shouldn’t object, since they’re all citizens, so their children wouldn’t be affected.
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