Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order July 21 directing six state agencies to investigate and penalize healthcare providers that facilitate what the governor’s office called “birth tourism.”
The order tasks the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the Department of State Health Services, the HHSC Office of Inspector General, the Texas Medical Board, the Texas Board of Nursing and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation with investigating claims of fraud associated with visiting the U.S. with the intent of giving birth to a U.S. citizen across the state’s healthcare industry.
Providers found to be involved could face license revocation or suspension, removal from state contracts, denial of state benefits or other enforcement under state law, according to the order.
“Texas will not tolerate the exploitation of our immigration laws by individuals traveling to the United States illegally or under false pretenses to give birth and secure citizenship for their child,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement.
The order builds on a probe Mr. Abbott launched July 7, when he directed HHSC to investigate Mission (Texas) Regional Medical Center over international billboards advertising birth packages to foreign nationals seeking U.S. citizenship for their children.
On July 15, HHSC referred allegations against Mission Regional and Weslaco, Texas-based Knapp Medical Center — both affiliated with Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare — to the state attorney general’s office.
Mission Regional has said a limited campaign of two billboards and a now-inactive website “may have caused unintended misunderstanding and was immediately discontinued,” adding that 98% of its self-pay obstetric patients provided U.S. home addresses.
In April, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued another facility, Houston-area De’ai Postpartum Care Center, over allegations it coached Chinese nationals to misrepresent their travel purpose on visa applications.
Visiting the U.S. with the intent to give birth to a U.S. citizen child is relatively rare, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which estimates that 9,600 to 26,000 of the roughly 3.5 million annual U.S. births involve the practice. Giving birth in the U.S. as a foreign national is not illegal, but obtaining a travel visa under false pretenses can constitute fraud, according to The Texas Tribune.
The Tribune reported the crackdown follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that preserved birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s effort to restrict it.
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