Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that the United States will deny visas to foreigners who own, operate, or help run commercial birth tourism operations, invoking a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the secretary to declare a foreigner inadmissible on foreign policy grounds.
The policy targets not only the people who run the networks but also visa “fixers” who coach applicants on how to lie, foreign doctors who knowingly facilitate the travel, and those involved in fraudulent use of Medicaid, according to the State Department. Certain family members of those operators can also be swept into the restriction.
Rubio framed the move as a defense of the immigration system. “The United States will not allow foreigners to exploit our immigration system,” he said. The secretary had signaled the direction in August, stating that American citizenship is “not for sale.”
The announcement landed just hours before President Donald Trump greeted Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews for a three-day state visit. The policy does not name any country, and State Department officials did not link it to the Xi visit.
A Targeted Crackdown, Not a Blanket Ban
Pregnant foreigners can still travel to the United States. The restrictions apply only to individuals the administration determines are knowingly working the commercial side of the birth tourism industry — a distinction meant to separate ordinary visitors from those profiting off the system.
Rubio said the networks advertise openly, walk clients through false visa applications, and charge tens of thousands of dollars to set up a birth in the United States. The State Department’s Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force has been working the issue since summer; in its first month, it revoked more than 600 visas, the department said.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the secretary of state has broad authority to declare a foreigner inadmissible on foreign policy grounds. Rubio used that provision to target the operators rather than the pregnant women themselves — a narrower approach than some immigration hardliners have pushed.
Congress Pushes Its Own Bill
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) introduced legislation last week that would treat recruiting or harboring a pregnant alien for birth tourism as trafficking, carrying up to 15 years per offense. “America is not the world’s maternity ward,” Mace said.
The State Department’s action comes as the administration looks for other avenues to curb birth tourism after a June 30 Supreme Court decision rejected Trump’s birthright citizenship order. In August, Trump signed two executive orders handing the birth tourism fight to the State Department and Homeland Security, according to Breitbart News, which first reported the visa restriction Wednesday.
Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, told a House Oversight task force this month that between 200,000 and 300,000 children were born to birth tourists over the last decade. The figure has been cited by supporters of tighter restrictions as evidence of the scale of the practice.
The new visa policy takes effect immediately, though it remains unclear how many people will be affected or how the administration will identify operators. The State Department has not released a list of countries or networks targeted.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2026/09/23/rubio-announces-visa-ban-birth-tourism-networks-operators/