DOJ shifts from court fight to criminal cases
The Justice Department is moving fast after the Supreme Court blocked President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department will now put more energy into prosecuting birth tourism schemes, especially cases tied to visa fraud. In plain English, if someone lies their way into the country just to have a baby and game the system, DOJ says it wants them in the crosshairs. That is not exactly a subtle policy change, and it sends a clear message that the administration plans to use the laws already on the books instead of waiting around for the courts to do all the work.
A memo tells prosecutors to focus on the fraud
Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald sent a department-wide memo on Tuesday telling every U.S. Attorney’s office to work closely with the Department of Homeland Security on these cases. The memo says prosecutors should not stop at visa fraud if the evidence supports more charges. Potential counts can include money laundering, identity theft, and wire fraud. The basic idea is simple: if foreign nationals come here under false pretenses, use tourist visas as a cover, and then try to secure citizenship for their child, federal prosecutors are being told to treat it as real fraud, not some harmless travel hack dreamed up in a hotel lobby.
Blanche says birth tourism is a booming industry
Speaking Thursday, Blanche called birth tourism a “booming industry” and said the DOJ will work with federal law enforcement to crack down on people who allegedly misuse tourist visas to give birth in the United States. He also said other federal agencies still have tools to make the visa process tighter, even after the Supreme Court ruling limited what the administration can do through executive action alone. Blanche argued that if someone’s real purpose for entering the country is to have a child who becomes a U.S. citizen, that is a violation of the law. He is not wrong about the core issue: laws only matter if they are enforced, and for years too many politicians treated this loophole like a quirky feature instead of a problem.
Years of warnings about anchor babies and maternity hotels
This crackdown also fits a longer pattern of warnings from investigators and reporters who have tracked birth tourism for years. Past coverage has described Chinese birth tourism networks, commercial surrogacy operations in California, and maternity hotels that coach pregnant women on how to lie at ports of entry and slip through the system. Some of these packages reportedly cost tens of thousands of dollars. That is not a vacation. That is a business model built around exploiting American citizenship rules while ordinary citizens are told to just accept it and move along. The administration now appears determined to make that racket more expensive, riskier, and a lot less cozy.
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