FBI Director Kash Patel says the Trump administration and Congress are developing legislation aimed at birth tourism, the practice of entering the United States primarily to give birth and secure American citizenship for a child. Patel disclosed the effort during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, according to an NTD report.
“We are following the federal statutes that we have on the books right now, and we’re working with our partners in Congress to draft new legislation to give us new authorities to make sure that we can combat the threat,” Patel said.
Patel told senators that the administration continues to distinguish between lawful and unlawful entry. “We want the United States of America to be open for legal immigration and not for illegal immigration, and we’re going to continue to work to that end and work with our partners in Congress,” he said. “We’ve asked them for more resources and legislation, and we need some bolstering in that capacity.”
His testimony followed a question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who introduced the Ban Birth Tourism Act of 2026 with six Republican colleagues in July. The bill text would make foreigners inadmissible when officials reasonably determine that their primary purpose for seeking a visitor visa is obtaining citizenship for a child through birth in the United States. It would also make participation in birth tourism grounds for deportation.
Blackburn said the proposal would “make it clear that any alien engaging in birthright tourism is inadmissible to the country.”
The legislative effort follows the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Trump v. Barbara. The Court held that children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully or temporarily present qualify as citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision invalidated Trump’s 2025 order restricting automatic citizenship for those children.
The Justice Department responded by directing prosecutors to prioritize suspected birth tourism fraud. Officials said cases involving false representations could trigger charges such as visa fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and wire fraud. “The Department of Justice will zealously protect the sanctity of United States citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system,” Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald wrote in a department memorandum.
Trump issued narrower orders in August, but Judge Deborah Boardman blocked the provisions affecting children covered by the earlier case. “The President has tried, through Executive Order, to upend our country’s longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship and eliminate, for large swaths of Americans, the right to citizenship by birth, a right enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Boardman wrote. Her order prevented federal agencies from “taking any other action to interfere with, deny, or fail to recognize the citizenship” of covered children. She concluded that the directive was “almost certainly unconstitutional” because the Supreme Court had already recognized those children as citizens.
NTD cited a Center for Immigration Studies estimate that birth tourism accounts for between 20000 and 26000 births annually.
From an America First nationalist perspective, Congress should treat birth tourism as evidence that the immigration system permits foreign nationals to exploit citizenship rules for personal advantage. Washington should sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration, strengthen visa screening, prosecute fraud, and make birth tourism grounds for exclusion and removal. Protecting citizenship requires firm national limits rather than temporary administrative measures.
