A House task force chairman is pushing to build a criminal conspiracy case against companies that help foreign nationals travel to the United States to give birth, a practice he says violates existing immigration law and abuses U.S. institutions.
Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, chairs the House Oversight Committee's Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses. His panel has already issued subpoenas to several birth tourism companies, according to Fox News Digital, as part of an investigation into firms advertising services to help foreign nationals enter the country for the purpose of giving birth so their children obtain U.S. citizenship.
"Right now, under current law, birth tourism is illegal. You cannot come into the United States for the purpose of giving birth," Gill said.
State Department regulations back that position. Consular officers are prohibited from issuing visitor visas when they determine that a foreign national's primary purpose is traveling to the U.S. to give birth and obtain citizenship for the child.
Gill said the companies facilitating that process may be crossing into criminal territory. "And I believe that there's a compelling legal case to be made that these businesses that are facilitating this process -- facilitating somebody coming into the United States to give birth -- lying on their immigration forms or on their visa forms -- are engaging in a form of criminal conspiracy, and that's what we're going to get to the bottom of," he said.
National attention sharpened in July after photographs circulated showing a billboard near Mission, Texas, close to the Mexican border city of Reynosa. The Spanish-language billboard advertised a now-defunct website called "Have My Baby In Texas" and listed prices from Mission Regional Medical Center: $3,950 for a standard birth and $5,525 for a Caesarean section. The billboard displayed a phone number with the "001" country code used for international calls to the United States.
"I think it's astounding," Gill said of the billboard.
The State of Texas launched its own investigation of the hospital following the billboard's circulation. Gill's task force has been quietly examining several companies since at least 2025, and the investigation has since expanded. The panel has requested records from a business in Miami and three other companies across the country.
Gill framed the issue in terms of costs to American taxpayers and the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. "We are the ones who often end up picking up the tab for a lot of these services," he said. He argued that birthright citizenship was designed for formerly enslaved people and their descendants when the amendment was ratified in 1868, and was not intended to apply in the current immigration context.
The investigation is ongoing. No charges have been filed, and no companies have been publicly named in connection with potential criminal referrals.
