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US President Donald Trump’s administration plans to crack down on networks it says help pregnant women lie on visa applications in order to secure US citizenship for their US-born babies, an issue that Trump has highlighted to justify his attempts to restrict birthright citizenship.
In an internal email sent on Thursday and reviewed by Reuters, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered investigative agents around the country to focus on a new Birth Tourism Initiative.
The operation will seek to root out networks that help pregnant foreign nationals come to the US to give birth so their children can receive citizenship, it said.
Trump, a Republican, has kicked off an aggressive push to reduce both legal and illegal immigration after taking office in January 2025. His administration has used the threat of birth tourism as a rationale for attempting to restrict the practice of granting automatic citizenship to children born on US soil.
