Supreme Court birthright citizenship case focuses on birth tourism

A lawyer for the Trump administration during arguments at the Supreme Court on Wednesday leaned hard into his claim that so-called birth tourism is strong evidence that the U.S. policy of automatically giving citizenship to babies born in the country needs to end.

The lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, said there are many companies, particularly ones that cater to Chinese and Russian elites, that offer to help them enter the U.S. so their children can be born there and gain citizenship.

“The congressional report that we cite in our brief talks about certain hot spots, like Russian elites coming to Miami through these birth tourism companies,” Sauer told the high court’s justices as President Donald Trump looked on from the gallery.

In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order that would effectively end birthright citizenship, which for more than 150 years has been considered the law of the land due to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

“Media reported as early as 2015 that, based on Chinese media reports, there are 500 — 500 — birth tourism companies in the People’s Republic of China, whose business is to bring people here to give birth and return to that nation,” said Sauer, who called that figure “striking” without saying what media reports he was referring to.

The solicitor general cited a March 9 letter from members of Congress to the Department of Homeland Security that said media reports indicate as many as 1.5 million Chinese nationals with U.S. citizenship might have obtained that status through the “birth tourism” industry.

The U.S. does not officially track the number of children born to travelers on visitor visas.

The most recent estimates from the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for reducing immigration, in 2020 put the number of “birth tourists” at around 20,000 to 26,000 babies a year.

The letter cites the conservative media outlet, Breitbart News Network, which attributes the 1.5 million estimate to author Peter Schweizer, who claimed those American citizens will then grow up in China only to return to the U.S. to legally vote there upon turning 18. Schweizer also argues that when those people turn 21, they will apply for U.S. residency status for their parents.

A woman and her husband were convicted in 2025 of conspiracy and money laundering over her birth tourism operation, USA Happy Baby.

And in 2015, federal authorities indicted 19 people linked to three “birth tourism” operations in Southern California. Federal authorities arrested three of those defendants in 2019.