US revokes over 600 visas in crackdown on birth to…
The United States has revoked more than 600 visas from foreign nationals over the past month as part of a sweeping campaign against birth tourism operations, the State Department announced Wednesday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media that American citizenship is not for sale, accusing criminal organizations of profiting by coaching foreign nationals to defraud the visa system and forge documents in order to secure citizenship for their children. He said these networks have systematically exploited weaknesses in US immigration law for financial gain.
The State Department recently launched a dedicated Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force tasked with identifying and dismantling these networks. Rubio said the unit will continue reviewing the activities of visa holders to put an end to what he called a heinous abuse of national law, and said the department intends to use every tool available to dismantle birth tourism networks and protect the integrity of American citizenship.
The crackdown follows an executive order President Donald Trump signed on August 6 that describes birth tourism as a calculated exploitation of immigration policy and casts it as a threat to national security. The order gives the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security authority to permanently bar entry and revoke documentation for individuals found to be facilitating these schemes.
Trump signed two executive orders on August 6 in a narrower attempt to limit birthright citizenship, again testing a constitutional provision even after the Supreme Court rejected an earlier version of his effort. Curbing birthright citizenship has remained one of the central goals of Trump’s broader immigration crackdown, with the White House specifically targeting birth tourism, in which pregnant foreign nationals travel to the United States specifically to give birth on American soil.
Following the Supreme Court setback on June 30, Trump initially urged Congress to pass legislation addressing the issue before ultimately turning to executive orders instead, a route that allows the administration to set policy directly but carries less legal weight than legislation passed by Congress.
