In Mission, Texas, a south Texas border town, local residents noticed a new billboard advertising “Birth Packages in South Texas,” with maternity tourism services listed at more than $5,000. The advertisement directed customers to the website HaveMyBabyInTexas.com, which has since been taken down.
It wasn’t just an advertisement for medical services, but rather an advertisement built around the promise of American citizenship.
The billboard quickly drew attention on social media, prompting Texas leadership to take notice. Not long after, Gov. Greg Abbott wrote a letter to the Executive Commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) directing the agency to investigate Mission Regional Medical Center for advertising birth tourism packages.
Recent litigation over birthright citizenship has renewed national attention on the issue. Regardless of how those questions are ultimately resolved, one point remains clear: Businesses that facilitate birth tourism through visa fraud or other unlawful conduct are not shielded from investigation or prosecution. The debate over citizenship is separate from enforcing laws against fraud.
About a week after he sent the letter, Gov. Abbott announced that evidence had been turned over to the Attorney General’s office for criminal prosecution. In a statement, Gov. Abbott said, “Regardless of what the Supreme Court of the United States may have said, U.S. citizenship is not for sale in Texas. Texas will not tolerate the exploitation of our health care system as a pathway to skirt federal immigration laws.”
That principle is reflected in Executive Order GA-57, which targets unlawful and subversive birth tourism operations that openly exploit Texas communities and public resources. This case of birth tourism fraud isn’t in isolation.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against another birth tourism operation out of Houston named the De’Ai Postpartum Care Center. According to the lawsuit, the business operated for nearly two decades helping Chinese nationals travel to the U.S. to give birth, coaching clients on avoiding immigration scrutiny, and facilitating efforts to obtain immigration benefits after their children were born.
The problem extends well beyond Texas. Chinese birth tourism schemes have been the subject of multiple state and federal investigations.
One FBI investigation uncovered You Win USA Vacation Services Corp., a business that marketed itself as a travel agency but allegedly charged between $40,000 to $80,000 per customer to arrange housing, medical care, and guidance designed to help families exploit the immigration system.
A whooping 26,000 babies are born to foreign nationals in the United States. They are otherwise known as “anchor babies.” One report estimated that in 2023 there were upwards of 70,000.
Every time someone exploits the system, it undermines confidence in the rule of law and diminishes the value of American citizenship. As Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, said, “That is an abuse to our immigration system and it’s an abuse of every single American in this country.”
Time and time again, Texas has had to act where the federal government has fallen short. Gov. Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, designated Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and is now directing state resources toward combatting fraudulent birth tourism operations.
Texas is not deciding constitutional questions about citizenship. Those issues belong to Congress and, where appropriate, the courts. But the state can enforce its laws against fraud, protect taxpayers from exploitation, and hold accountable those who profit from abusing the immigration system.
Birth tourism is one example of a broader challenge—foreign actors identifying and exploiting weaknesses in our immigration system. Executive Order GA-57 is an important step, and the Legislature can make those protections permanent.
Texas should continue building a permanent homeland defense framework that strengthens legal status verification, improves intelligence and interagency coordination, and equips state agencies to detect and disrupt these schemes before they take root. Doing so not only protects taxpayers and the integrity of American citizenship, but also makes it more difficult for foreign nationals and hostile networks to exploit vulnerabilities within the United States.
American citizenship should never be treated as a product for sale.
