Rep. Nancy Mace introduced legislation Thursday that would establish new criminal penalties for organizing birth-tourism operations, create a federal enforcement task force and allow denaturalization proceedings in fraud-related cases.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
WASHINGTON — Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced legislation Thursday that would create a new federal criminal framework targeting people and organizations that arrange for foreign nationals to travel to the United States to give birth for the purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for their children.
The “American Citizenship Integrity Act” would classify recruiting, transporting or harboring a noncitizen for that purpose as a form of trafficking and authorize prison sentences of up to 15 years for each offense, according to details of the legislation provided to Breitbart News. Organizations convicted under the proposed law could face sentences of up to 30 years.
The legislation would go beyond prosecuting organizers. It would authorize denaturalization proceedings when citizenship was obtained through fraud connected to a birth-tourism operation, according to the proposal.
Mace’s bill would also establish an American Citizenship Integrity Interagency Task Force jointly led by the attorney general and secretary of Homeland Security. The task force would coordinate investigations, prosecutions and efforts to dismantle birth-tourism organizations, including cooperation with international law-enforcement agencies.
Every federal judicial district would additionally be assigned a prosecutor responsible for coordinating and supervising cases involving alleged birth tourism and citizenship fraud.
“American citizenship isn’t a travel souvenir or a commodity for sale. It’s one of the greatest privileges on Earth,” Mace told Breitbart News in an exclusive statement Thursday. “Birth tourism is an abuse of our immigration system. It rewards people for exploiting our laws while millions of Americans are left paying the price. Our bill shuts the door on this scam once and for all.”
The congresswoman added, “America is not the world’s maternity ward. If you’re exploiting our laws to manufacture U.S. citizenship, the free ride is over. This legislation puts criminal birth tourism networks on notice and gives law enforcement the tools to shut them down.”
Federal visa policy already prohibits using a visitor visa when the primary purpose of the trip is to give birth in the United States to obtain citizenship for the child. The State Department explicitly lists birth tourism as a purpose not permitted on a visitor visa.
The scale of the practice is not measured directly by the federal government. Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, testified before a House Oversight Committee task force earlier this month that his organization estimated between 20,000 and 26,000 possible birth-tourism cases annually using older census and birth-record data.
“The best estimate we have made at the Center for Immigration Studies of the possible number of births to tourists is 20,000 to 26,000 a year, though that estimate is based on data from 2016 and 2017,” Camarota told the committee. “Some might think the number is small relative to the overall number of births in the U.S. annually; however, the effect is cumulative. Assuming the numbers we estimated in the past continued, some 200,000 to 300,000 children were born to birth tourists over the last decade — hardly a trivial number.”
Camarota has acknowledged that the estimate identifies possible birth-tourism cases rather than an official government count. His organization revised an earlier estimate in 2020 after identifying a problem with its original methodology.
Mace’s proposal arrives after the Trump administration pursued several separate avenues this summer to restrict or prosecute birth tourism following a Supreme Court defeat over the broader question of birthright citizenship.
On June 30, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower-court injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to deny automatic citizenship to certain children born in the United States to parents who were unlawfully or temporarily present. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the controlling opinion, joined by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson; Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment while dissenting in part. The Court concluded that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause encompasses children born in the United States to temporary visitors as well as other people subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
Trump responded sarcastically to the ruling.
“I would like to congratulate President Xi, and the Great Country of China, on their massive Birthright Citizenship WIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
He also called for congressional action following the decision, saying lawmakers “will have my complete and total support!”
The Justice Department responded to the ruling the same day by instructing federal prosecutors to give greater priority to investigating birth-tourism operations. A department memorandum said existing federal statutes could be used in cases involving false visa applications and other alleged conduct, including visa fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, health care fraud and aggravated identity theft.
The administration expanded that effort in August.
Trump signed an executive order Aug. 6 directing the State and Homeland Security departments to take additional steps against foreign nationals who enter the country on nonimmigrant visas for the purpose of giving birth and against people or organizations that facilitate such travel. The order authorized measures that could include visa revocation, denial of entry and other enforcement actions.
The State Department subsequently established a Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force to examine visa holders’ activities, identify suspected birth-tourism cases and target facilitator networks. The department said the task force would take action to revoke visas of “those who engage in or facilitate it.”
Mace’s legislation would place additional criminal penalties and enforcement structures into federal statute rather than relying solely on executive-branch visa and prosecution policies.
The proposal now begins the congressional process, where it would have to pass both the House and Senate and be signed by the president before any of its new criminal penalties, task-force requirements or denaturalization provisions could take effect.
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