{"id":1067,"date":"2026-07-15T19:41:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T19:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1067"},"modified":"2026-07-15T19:41:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T19:41:32","slug":"what-trumps-proposal-to-ban-pregnant-tourists-could-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1067","title":{"rendered":"What Trump\u2019s Proposal to Ban Pregnant Tourists Could Look Like"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the days<\/span> after the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship as the law of the land, an enraged Trump administration has been rigorously investigating new ways to crack down on \u201cbirth tourism,\u201d a practice that refers to pregnant women who come to the United States solely to give birth and obtain US citizenship for their children. And to do so, they have floated an alarming option: a potential ban on pregnant foreigners.<\/p>

Read more ICE Won\u2019t Change Under Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou have mothers that come in fully pregnant, have a baby, go home,\u201d Stephen Miller told Fox News, as host Jesse Watters cracked about \u201cbanning foreign pregnant women\u201d from entering the US. \u201cThat baby then gets Medicaid,\u201d Miller continued, \u201cand that baby gets welfare, and that baby gets cash assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a separate Fox News appearance, wherein host Brian Kilmeade similarly suggested a blanket ban on pregnant tourists, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin seemed receptive to the idea. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely a national security issue,\u201d he said, going on to describe an elaborate scenario in which Chinese nationals give birth in the US and return to China with their newly minted American citizen babies. Once there, Mullin continued, these Chinese mothers would raise US citizens in a \u201ccommunist regime,\u201d only for them to return as adults to attend American universities where they could begin \u201cstealing intellectual property.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not illegal for foreign nationals to give birth in the US. But coming to the US solely to give birth, thereby lying on visa applications<\/span> or deceiving border officials, is prohibited. So too are companies that sell birth tourism schemes. But for all the warnings about the scale and vastness of<\/span>birth tourism, there is scant data on the issue. \u201cThere\u2019s no direct data on this, which is what\u2019s creating the confusion,\u201d Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said. \u201cEveryone is pandering to numbers with whatever they feel like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lack of data hasn\u2019t stopped Trump officials, who remain determined to fundamentally reshape our understanding of who is considered to be a \u201creal\u201d American after losing at the Supreme Court, albeit narrowly. But in targeting pregnant foreigners, they omit a key detail: A 2020 federal regulation that denies travel visas to pregnant people and gives border agents wide latitude to deny entry to women suspected of birth tourism already exists\u2014thanks to the first Trump administration.<\/p>\n

That regulation, according to Chishti, amounted to a \u201csignificant change in the way we structure US law,\u201d in that it shifted the burden away<\/em> from the government to establish an attempt at birth tourism to a pregnant person having to prove they weren\u2019t traveling to the US just to give birth. If found inadmissible, the regulation also denied pregnant people opportunities to plead their cases.<\/p>\n

So, how are such determinations made? Do Customs and Border Patrol officials, who have such broad discretion to deny anyone entry into the country, carry pregnancy tests? Have OB-GYNs been engaged to patrol airports to assess how pregnant a person is? Theoretically, we should have some answers about how such determinations are made, given that the regulation has been on the books for over six years. But when Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, attempted to FOIA information about how enforcement was being carried out, she never received an answer.<\/p>\n

According to Homeland Security\u2019s online guidance, officers will often consider \u201cthe date your child is due for delivery and the length of time you intend to stay in the United States.\u201d They also tend to check if you have sufficient insurance to cover any medical expenses. But nothing is said about how<\/em> officers determine a woman is pregnant in the first place, which is troubling considering the enormous variation in how a person\u2019s physical appearance coincides with their gestational state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t trust a customs official to know how people look different at different stages of pregnancy,\u201d Frost said, adding that she was concerned with how the policy \u201cpolices pregnant women.\u201d<\/p>

Read more The Most Extreme GOP Candidate in the Nation<\/a><\/p>\n

No such concern was evident at the Supreme Court in April, when Solicitor General John Sauer that 1.5 million Chinese nationals hold US citizenship because of birth tourism. But Chief Justice John Roberts appeared skeptical. When pressed on how rampant birth tourism actually was, Sauer acknowledged, \u201cNo one knows for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s true. But a more accurate response would note that although there is no official tally, experts widely agree that the number is far less than 1.5 million from a single country. Even the conservative anti-immigration group, the Center for Immigration Studies, estimates that there are 26,000 such births at most<\/em>. Which adds up to less than 1 percent of all babies born in the US in a year.<\/p>\n

Roberts, in upholding birthright citizenship, referenced this very lack of evidence in his opinion. \u201cThe trouble is that there is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view. Certainly, no one said that such a change had occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n

The natural question<\/span>, then, becomes what more the Trump administration could do beyond enforcing the already existing federal regulations. One option, Chishti said, could be ramping up the number of women placed under expedited removals, which sidesteps the legal right to a judge\u2014the same process that the Trump administration has used in its wider immigration crackdown to quickly deport people without a court hearing. Also on the table: prosecuting individual women, instead of organized groups that sell birth tourism services.<\/p>\n

As for pregnancy tests at the border, that might seem extreme, even for this White House. But Chishti cautioned against dismissing the potential of such alarming\u2014 not to mention logistically complicated\u2014measures getting added to the government\u2019s enforcement protocol. \u201cIf you\u2019re determined that this is the obsession you have,\u201d Chishti said, \u201ccost doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d In fact, the US has a long history of using medical tests to bar entry to foreigners, including those who tested positive for HIV and Chinese immigrants who tested positive for a slew of diseases and infections during the Chinese Exclusion Act back in 1882, as well as using forced sterilizations against Black and indigenous groups.Should pregnancy exams take place at the border, they would arrive at a moment when states are increasingly embracing digital surveillance tools to track pregnant people seeking abortions.<\/p>\n

It certainly helps the Trump administration that birth tourism, to the extent that it is a problem, does not poll well with Americans, even though a majority of Americans support birthright citizenship as a constitutional right. That\u2019s because many see the former as a strategy for \u201cothers\u201d to game a system through exploitation. The reward? According to opponents, it\u2019s largely access to the US welfare system. But for many, Frost said, Americans are more likely to disapprove of birth tourism because it insults their notions of American belonging. To them, \u201ccitizenship is not just about a passport and legal rights,\u201d she said, \u201cit also carries a sense of membership, a being part of \u2018us\u2019\u2014and [birth tourism] offends those ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of which, under the right scenario, could open the doors for more profiling. For now, it\u2019s unclear what exactly the Trump administration has in mind. But considering the once-unthinkable ways the administration has carried out the largest deportation campaign in US history, and the unnervingly close decision that barely saved birthright citizenship, it seems reasonable to prepare for the worst.<\/p>

Read more Nation\u2019s Biggest Public Utility Just Doubled Down on Coal, Gas, and Nuclear<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you\u2019re determined that this is the obsession you have, cost doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Trump\u2019s Proposal to Ban Pregnant Tourists Could Look Like - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1067\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Trump\u2019s Proposal to Ban Pregnant Tourists Could Look Like - Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cIf you\u2019re determined that this is the obsession you have, cost doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1067\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Moving and Mortgage Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-15T19:41:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/da5905f3a7c3a2faaae2bb77c1e553ab.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1125\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1067#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1067\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/6b7c79bcfd888d98f34c5413df7e81a2\"},\"headline\":\"What Trump\u2019s Proposal to Ban Pregnant Tourists Could Look Like\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-15T19:41:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1067\"},\"wordCount\":1270,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1067#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/9476927637c9b27b7d9495fed39a69a4.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1067#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1067\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/movingandmortgagehub.com\\\/?p=1067\",\"name\":\"What Trump\u2019s Proposal to Ban Pregnant Tourists Could Look Like - 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