The Trump administration is using visa enforcement to target “birth tourism,” an alleged scheme utilized by foreign nationals to obtain visitor visas for the primary purpose of giving birth in the U.S. and securing American citizenship for their children.

The Trump administration recently announced that it disrupted “a sophisticated birth tourism network” in West Africa involving more than 100 foreign nationals utilizing false documents and, what the State Department described as “fixers,” to get themselves visas to go to the United States to give birth so their children would be born on U.S. soil and treated as American citizens.

But that was just one of the networks the State Department indicated it had uncovered. The agency’s announcement said U.S. officials identified more than 400 suspected birth tourism cases emanating from Europe since 2024, and tied to at least six companies that helped coach applicants on what to say during their visa interview, arranged housing and set-up delivery plans.

“We shut it down, revoked these foreign nationals’ visas, and are coordinating with local authorities to systematically identify and cut off any similar operations,” the State Department said in its announcement. “A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right. The State Department is taking action around the world to stop this abuse, dismantle birth tourism networks, and hold accountable those who try to scam our system.”

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The effort comes as Trump has renewed his long-running criticism of birthright citizenship, including through a 2025 executive order seeking to narrow who is automatically treated as a U.S. citizen at birth. It also builds on a first-term Trump administration rule from 2020 that instructed consular officers to deny visitor visas to foreign nationals believed to be traveling to the U.S. primarily to give birth and obtain American citizenship for their children.

“President Trump will always put the American people first. Uninhibited birth tourism poses a tremendous cost to taxpayers and threatens our national security,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told Fox News Digital. “The Trump administration is effectively ending this practice, which brings the United States in line with the policy of most countries around the world.”

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Federation for American Immigration Reform’s Ira Mehlman noted to Fox News Digital that visa fraud is “a significant issue,” pointing out it is a problem even outside the framework of birth tourism. 

“The prospect of birthright citizenship is undeniably an inducement for people to commit visa fraud,” Mehlman said. “Birth tourism would not exist otherwise.”

“Obviously, any woman who does not disclose her intention to have her baby in the U.S. when she applies for a visa is committing fraud. Remove the incentive of automatic birthright citizenship for people who are not citizens and legal permanent residents, and the reason for committing this sort of fraud goes away,” he continued.

Birth tourism has surfaced repeatedly in the U.S. in recent years, particularly through operations accused of coaching foreign nationals to obscure the purpose of their travel.

In California, federal prosecutors secured convictions against the operators of USA Happy Baby, a company accused of helping Chinese women travel to the U.S. to give birth to American-citizen children, while a separate operator from a business called You Win USA pleaded guilty in another case stemming from a broader federal crackdown.

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More recently, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a Houston-area postpartum center accused of facilitating more than 1,000 births for primarily Chinese clients, while House Oversight Republicans launched an inquiry into several U.S.-based companies allegedly advertising birth-tourism services.

Mehlman urged Congress to do more to enhance vetting of visa applicants, prosecute those who commit fraud and put an end to birth tourism. He said there were avenues for legal action against the entities allegedly facilitating the scheme.

“To the extent that we can take legal action against companies that are outside the United States, we should, much like we prosecute other types of transnational crime and fraud operations,” Mehlman told Fox News Digital. “But each one of these companies works with service providers here in the U.S., including hospitals.”

The Trump Department of Justice going after people who make the president mad or even sad is nothing new, in this dangerous age when the presidency is increasingly about placating the desires of the old man in the Oval Office.

Leticia James, James Comey, Adam Schiff. Most recently, E. Jean Carroll, who sued President Trump personally and won a huge settlement on her claim that he sexually assaulted her. Now, the Department of Justice is investigating her for potential perjury.

It would be easy to think of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Monday that the U.S. Department of Justice is now targeting his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, as just another addition to that list.

But this attack on Siebel Newsom (alleged attack, anyway — the Department of Justice has not confirmed she is a target) is something much darker in our slide into authoritarianism. While the details of what is being investigated are murky and the president hasn’t chimed in yet, it has all the appearances of the Trump administration seeking to stop a political rival who has a real shot at knocking MAGA out of the top office.

“It’s not just random or accidental that the wife of a major presidential candidate is being investigated,” Steven Levitsky, a professor of politics at Harvard University, told me Monday. “That’s the nature of selective prosecution and that is a pillar of authoritarian rule.”

Levitsky is an expert on authoritarian regimes, and how they take and keep power. His point that Newsom is a viable challenger may seem obvious — Newsom himself is already fundraising off of it. But this particular alleged investigation bears a moment of pause because it is not the regular decline of justice we have been witnessing to this moment.

“This is different,” he said. “This is forward-looking persecution.”

Until now, Levistky points out, Trump has screamed and hollered for the prosecution of those who have wronged him in the past, sometimes even the distant past. Yes, he’s disgraced the Department of Justice with the demand it function as his own personal hammer of retribution, even putting his own personal attorney, Todd Blanche, in charge when Pam Bondi wasn’t accommodating or successful enough at stomping perceived enemies and quashing the Epstein files.

But those prosecutions have largely been grievance-based, not aimed at keeping power.

Going after Siebel Newsom seems more like a forward-looking, preemptive strike targeting Newsom ahead of the 2028 election through every decent man’s Achilles’ heel, his family.

In fact, the right-wing media — which is closely tied to the whims of the White House — has been targeting Siebel Newsom for months.

In particular, Siebel Newsom has been attacked for her work as a documentary filmmaker who focuses on female empowerment and parsing how and why we have the gender norms that we do when it comes to masculinity and femininity. I’ll let you figure out how popular that is in MAGA world, where real women make sandwiches.

Conservative commentator Sean Hannity has gone after Siebel Newsom for saying she sometimes changes the gender of a book’s character from “he” to “she” when she’s reading to her children. Fox News has attacked her for daring to give her boys dolls to play with, leading some MAGA influencers to label her “psychotic” or “abusive.” Right-wing icon Megyn Kelly called her a “nutcase” for sharing the tragic story of her sister’s death when Siebel Newsom was 6.

And other media have focused on the fact that some of the films she has been involved with have been approved for use in California schools, leading to conspiracies that Newsom used his influence to force his wife’s “woke” agenda on kids, by which we are apparently talking about the liberal plagues of decency and inclusion.

Newsom’s office said that in recent weeks, relatives, friends and business associates of the family have been contacted by investigators from the FBI and IRS. Siebel Newsom also does work around online safety for children, but it seems likely that any attention would focus on these films, and related nonprofits, and the perennially popular MAGA boogeyman of schools forcing ideologies on kids. Throw in Siebel Newsom’s company making even a dollar, and the way the IRS can find problems with any tax return, and you’ve got about 10,000 hours of right-wing propaganda.

So whether the pressure to target Siebel Newsom came from the White House or not, Newsom’s announcement raises the troubling specter that this administration is getting more serious about remaining in control by kneecapping potential replacements before they grow too strong.

In his Monday video, Newsom urged Trump with mano a mano bravado to come after him as much as he wanted, but to leave his wife and family out of it. But I would not underestimate Siebel Newsom, who showed her strength when she testified against disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, laying out publicly a private, painful tale.

Siebel Newsom’s office told me she’s fine being part of any fight against Trump.

“There are clearly no boundaries to what Donald Trump will do to get his way or to challenge those who get in his way,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement.

The “governor and I will continue to speak truth to power because the American people deserve so much more.”

By coming out in advance of any official announcement of an investigation by the Department of Justice, Siebel Newsom and her husband may be able to take control of the narrative, something Trump detests.

That pushback, Levitsky said, is critical, not just for them, but more importantly for all of us. After last year, when so many institutions and individuals crumbled in the face of Trump’s power, the strength of our democracy increasingly depends on those with political capital standing up to him.

Coming out punching first does just that.