Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has shut down a Houston-area business that allegedly helped more than 1,000 Chinese nationals give birth on American soil, a rare enforcement win in a fight that has drawn growing attention from both state and federal officials.
The De'Ai Postpartum Care Center and its operators were ordered to cease operations and stop facilitating births after Paxton's office filed suit against the business in April 2026. Paxton announced the shutdown Friday, calling the center a front for exploiting gaps in the immigration system.
The center had operated for nearly two decades, according to the attorney general's office, marketing its services on Chinese social media platforms and websites. The lawsuit alleged the business coached women to apply for U.S. visas before becoming pregnant, a tactic designed to avoid raising red flags with federal immigration authorities, and then helped them travel to Texas to deliver babies who would automatically receive American citizenship.
In a release posted on X, Paxton laid out his case in blunt terms:
"I will do everything in my power to stop foreign nationals from unlawfully exploiting our immigration system through the scam of 'birth tourism.' This operation helped Chinese foreign nationals come to Texas to evade our laws. Now we have shut it down."
The figure at the center of the case is striking. More than 1,000 births over roughly two decades means the De'Ai center averaged about one birth tourism delivery per week for years, all while operating inside a major American metropolitan area. The attorney general's office did not name the individual operators of the center, and no arrests or criminal charges were mentioned in connection with the shutdown.
Fox 26 Houston reported additional details about the center's alleged activities and history. The station's reporting helped flesh out how the operation marketed itself and recruited clients from overseas, though the specific Chinese social media platforms the center used were not identified by name.
Birth tourism, the practice of traveling to the United States specifically to give birth so a child receives automatic citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment, has become a flashpoint in the broader immigration debate. The Trump administration has moved aggressively on the issue, with the president signing executive orders targeting birth tourism and narrowing birthright citizenship earlier this year.
One detail in the case deserves more scrutiny than it has received: the De'Ai center allegedly ran this operation for close to 20 years. That means the business survived multiple administrations, both in Austin and Washington, without being shut down. Whether local, state, or federal authorities were aware of the center's activities during that span, and why no enforcement action came sooner, remains an open question the attorney general's announcement did not address.
The lawsuit's legal underpinnings also remain unclear. Paxton's office did not publicly identify the specific statutes or legal theories used to bring the case, nor did it specify whether the action was civil or criminal. The court handling the matter and the case number were not disclosed in the announcement.
That ambiguity matters. Birth tourism occupies a gray zone in American law. No federal statute explicitly bans traveling to the United States to give birth, though fraud in the visa application process, such as misrepresenting the purpose of a trip, can violate federal law. Paxton's lawsuit appears to target the center's role in coaching clients to evade detection, but the precise legal basis remains unpublished.
A federal judge recently declined to block one of Trump's new birthright citizenship orders, signaling that courts may be more receptive to enforcement actions in this space than critics predicted.
Paxton's action fits a pattern of state attorneys general stepping into enforcement vacuums left by the federal government. Texas has been at the forefront of immigration-related litigation for years, and this case adds a new dimension, targeting not the immigrants themselves but the domestic businesses that profit from helping them circumvent the rules.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have floated additional measures to address birth tourism directly. Senator Markwayne Mullin has proposed restricting pregnant travelers as part of the White House's search for workable policy tools, though that proposal has drawn its own legal and practical objections.
Whether the De'Ai shutdown produces lasting results or simply pushes the industry to other states or underground remains to be seen. Birth tourism operations have been documented in California, New York, and Florida, and demand from overseas clients, particularly from China and Russia, has shown little sign of slowing. Shutting down one center, even one responsible for more than a thousand births, does not close the loophole that made the business possible in the first place.
Paxton himself is no stranger to high-profile political fights. A Trump-backed super PAC recently invested $10 million in a Texas Senate race to boost Paxton's prospects, underscoring his rising profile within the national conservative movement.
Still, the open questions around this case are worth pressing. Were the center's operators U.S. citizens or foreign nationals? Did any federal agency investigate the operation during its nearly 20-year run? Will the more than 1,000 children born through the program face any legal consequences regarding their citizenship status? The attorney general's announcement answered none of these.
Meanwhile, broader fights over immigration enforcement continue to stall in the Senate, where conservative frustration with the pace of action has become a recurring theme.
A business that helped foreign nationals game the system for two decades finally got shut down. The real question is why it took this long, and how many others are still running.
