Amid a battle at the nation’s highest court over birthright citizenship, Texas claims a birth center is deliberately helping Chinese citizens skirt immigration laws.
HOUSTON (CN) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused a Houston-area medical center Wednesday of illegally helping Chinese citizens secure U.S. citizenship for their children.
IN lawsuit filed in Fort Bend County, Paxton alleges De’ai Postpartum Care Center has engaged in “birth tourism” — a process the attorney general characterizes as expectant mothers obtaining tourist visas to travel to countries to obtain birthright citizenship for their children — for nearly two decades.
“America is for Americans, not for foreigners trying to cheat the system to claim citizenship,” Paxton said in a statement. “The center’s scheme not only facilitated an invasion of Texas, but also involved the protection and facilitation of immigration law violations. Birthright citizenship is a fraud that threatens national security, and I will do everything in my power to stop illegal ‘birth tourism’ schemes like this.”
Paxton claims that since 2008, the company has operated a full-service luxury birth tourism business from one residential property in Fort Bend County, which has since expanded to four residential properties.
He writes that their services are marketed through the company’s website, social media, the private messaging app WeChat and an online forum dedicated to birth tourism in the United States. The company’s website and social media platforms reportedly boast that they have facilitated the birth of more than 1,000 American-born babies for Chinese citizens.
“Tourist visas cannot be issued for this purpose,” Paxton wrote in the lawsuit. “This is an illegal scheme that perpetuates fraud on the government and violates Texas law.”
The attorney general accuses the center of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. It also brings allegations of tampering with government records and the illegal concealment and harboring of Chinese nationals, along with a pesky public allegation of collusion in criminal activity.
The Trump administration has explicitly denied travel to the United States for the purpose of childbirth since January 2020 and has attempted to revoke birthright citizenshipa battle now in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Paxton claims that the company’s operators are aware of the illegality of their business.
The attorney general cited a social media post that he says encouraged Chinese women to apply for their tourist visas before pregnancy because the U.S. government is closely monitoring maternity tourism, and warned women that it could result in a tourist visa denial if they apply after becoming pregnant. Paxton also accuses the center of instructing clients on how to bypass immigration procedures to obtain visas and citizenship for themselves and their children.
“Defendants consult with clients regarding the travel process, develop customized immigration strategies, and coach clients on how to navigate immigration procedures and minimize legal and immigration scrutiny,” Paxton writes.
Additionally, the attorney general questions the operators’ credentials — according to Paxton, no search results for either of the two operators’ names could be found on the Texas Nursing License Verification Portal and the Texas Medical Board’s online database. The company’s website claims to be affiliated with licensed physicians.
A company operator declined to comment on the pending litigation, and another operator did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Paxton is seeking an injunction to shut down the company and its operations, along with civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
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