The Trump Justice Department will use fraud and money laundering laws to curb these international scam networks
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The acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, announced this Wednesday that the Department of Justice of the Trump administrationwill charge individuals who exploit legal loopholes of U.S. citizenship and travel to the United States for "birth tourism."
The measure comes from a direct order from Trump, who yesterday asked federal prosecutors across the country to prioritize investigations and prosecutions of birth tourism networks in response to the Supreme Court ruling that overturns a presidential decree prohibiting birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented foreigners.
Any foreign citizen who arrives in the U.S. under "false pretenses" to give birth and secure automatic citizenship will be charged with serious crimes such as visa fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and wire fraud. "The Department of Justice will zealously protect the sanctity of U.S. citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system," wrote prosecutor McDonald.
The current acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche
The government will tighten visa controls
While previous prosecutions in such cases largely focused on visa fraud, the presidential directive clarifies that prosecutors must apply the full range of criminal statutes when the evidence warrants it. In this way, Trump aims to put an end to the sophisticated birth tourism industry from China, which creates "anchor babies" potentially linked to influence operations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The head of the justice department added that, although the ruling limits the government's ability to change birthright citizenship through executive action, other federal agencies still have tools available to discourage the practice through the visa application process.
"There are other things that DHS and the federal government can do in the visa process and in the application process to try to minimize or limit the opportunity for people to come here, not to visit or do what they say they are going to do on their tourist visa, but simply to have a baby who can then be a U.S. citizen", explained Blanche.
He concluded by promising that the Department of Justice will closely coordinate with federal law enforcement to carry out investigations into birth tourism. "What we have to do as the Department of Justice is ensure that our agents, the HSI agents we work with, and the FBI are focused on stopping that, and that is what we are going to do," Blanche concluded.
Trump signed an order in February that limited birthright citizenship
