After losing a bid to end birthright citizenship, the Trump administration had directed its focus into a new plan to block pregnant foreign women from entering the US.
According to supporters of Trump, the proposal is designed to “buckle down” on so-called “birth tourism”, a reference to pregnant women who may travel to the US and give birth so their child can be a citizen.
If pursued, the proposal would shift the administration’s focus from challenging the citizenship rights of children born in the US to restricting pregnant women from entering the country. It also raises fresh concerns about how women’s bodies are increasingly becoming a focus of immigration policy and political debate.
It comes after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship this week, a major blow to the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda.
Trump had previously issued an executive order that sought to deny automatic citizenship to the children born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents. The Supreme Court said this order violated the 14th amendment of the constitution. It’s considered one of the biggest legal setbacks of Trump’s second presidency.
“Everybody should agree that it’s a violation of our laws if your intent in coming here, if you’re pregnant, is to have a child to become a U.S. citizen,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters about the new plan to bar pregnant women from entering the country.
“And so what we have to do as the Department of Justice is make sure our agents, our HSI agents that we work with, and the FBI are focused on stopping that.”
Republican Andy Ogles has said he will introduce a bill, called “Anchors Away,” to prevent pregnant women from entering the U.S. if they are not citizens or green card holders.
“What this bill does is, if you are a pregnant woman, you can’t come into this country. Got to be a citizen to be here, you have to be a green card holder. So, if you’re pregnant and you don’t have one of those statuses, no admittance allowed,” Ogles said on social media on Tuesday.
On Fox News, Ogles elaborated on the proposal, saying: “We are literally going to be dropping Anchors Away, which really pushes back against the Supreme Court, this idea that if you are pregnant and you are from a foreign nation, you know what, it is time for Congress to pass a law that says you cannot come here.”
“You cannot have a baby on US soil and exploit this loophole.”
After the Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday, the Justice Department released a memo that urged prosecutors to investigate so-called “birth tourism”.
“The criminal laws of the United States already prohibit conduct inherent to so many of these so-called ‘birth tourism’ schemes,” Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald wrote in the memo.
“For example, many such schemes start with a false visa application – with lies about the purpose or duration of one’s travel to the United States.”
There is limited evidence that “birth tourism” is a significant issue in the US, as the government does not track the numbers. Various researchers and think tanks have released figures that vary from 5,000 to 26,000 births by women on tourist visas each year, representing a tiny fraction of all births in the US.
Advocates argue that existing laws already allow authorities to deny visas where they believe the primary purpose of travel is to give birth in the United States.