After the Supreme Court blocked a birthright citizenship order, the Trump administration is shutting off a Pacific travel loophole that critics say fed Chinese birth tourism and security risk.
The Department of Homeland Security has suspended a visa-free travel program that let pre-screened Chinese nationals visit the Northern Mariana Islands for up to 14 days, citing birth tourism, espionage risk, and illegal onward travel to nearby Guam.
Just the News reported the move as the latest step in a broader campaign to curb birth tourism after the high court struck down a January 2025 executive order that sought to limit automatic citizenship for children of illegal immigrants and temporary visitors.
Birth tourism is traveling to another country mainly to give birth so the child gains citizenship. On U.S. soil, including the Northern Mariana Islands, that status has long been treated as automatic under the 14th Amendment as courts have read it since the 1898 Wong Kim Ark case.
President Trump called the Supreme Court’s June ruling “very unfortunate” and said the administration would adjust course. The new DHS action, paired with earlier visa crackdowns, shows how that adjustment is landing in practice.
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is a U.S. territory in the western Pacific. Children born there are U.S. citizens, and the islands have drawn scrutiny as a destination for Chinese mothers seeking that status without the full mainland visa process.
The travel arrangement dates to 2009, when the Obama administration used DHS parole authority to let Chinese and Russian visitors reach the islands without a standard visa. Republican senators later warned that the setup had turned into a pipeline.
In a January letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Sens. Mike Lee, Rick Scott, John Cornyn, and Bill Cassidy said the parole program was a “lingering policy” that “has opened the United States to significant security threats by creating a veritable cottage industry of Chinese nationals giving birth in the CNMI and gaining access to U.S. citizenship.”
The senators’ letter cited a sharp rise in births to visiting Chinese mothers on the islands, from fewer than 10 a year in 2009 to almost 600 in 2018. Prior reporting tied to investigative journalist Peter Schweizer has put Chinese birth-tourist newborns at more than 70 percent of births there under the visa-free policy.
That scale matters beyond one territory. Schweizer has argued the federal government does not track birthright citizenship numbers nationwide, while Chinese estimates he has cited run far higher.
"Now our federal government does not keep track of birthright citizenship numbers, so we literally have no idea how many people are doing this, but the Chinese government has looked at this and come to their own estimates and their belief is, over the last 13 years, every year, roughly 100,000 Chinese nationals have done this, which means you're looking at more than a million, and think about this, more than a million American citizens."
Schweizer, author of The Invisible Coup, has said those children are often born to Chinese elites, raised in China, schooled there, and tied to the CCP establishment, then able, at 18, to vote in the United States and seek government jobs.
"These are children that are born in the United States, primarily to the Chinese elite. They then go back to China, where they're raised. They go to Chinese schools. They're part of the CCP establishment."
He added the citizenship payoff arrives at adulthood.
"When they turn 18, they can now vote [in the United States]. They can now get government jobs."
DHS published a Federal Register notice suspending the program that allowed pre-screened Chinese nationals two-week visa-free stays. The department tied the decision to concerns the pathway could aid birth tourism, espionage, and illegal travel on to Guam.
The New York Post reported the suspended program as the Economic Vitality & Security Travel Authorization Program, or EVS-TAP, and said more than 3,000 Chinese nationals used it in fiscal year 2025. The suspension takes effect at 2 p.m. EDT on Oct. 30 and covers new applicants and travelers already approved, while DHS evaluates the program with other agencies.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who had pressed the administration to end the arrangement, celebrated the suspension on X and credited DHS leadership with closing what he called a Biden-era loophole after senators raised the alarm earlier in the year.
"I'm very pleased to report that [Mullin] at DHS just closed Joe Biden's loophole for Chinese birth tourism for which we sounded the alarm earlier this year."
Lee framed the stakes in blunt terms for American citizenship.
"America is not a nursery for the [Chinese Communist Party] to steal citizenship."
DHS language in the notice, as carried in other coverage, matched the senators’ core warning: birth tourism has long been a problem in the Northern Marianas, and visa-exempt travel with lighter vetting can lower the barriers.
The territory fight sits alongside other enforcement fights the administration is pressing in the courts and agencies, including a Fifth Circuit detention ruling that could fortify its hand ahead of further Supreme Court immigration clashes.
On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order aimed at denying automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are here illegally or only temporarily. The administration’s legal theory turned on the 14th Amendment phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
The Supreme Court struck that order down in June, rejecting the administration’s reading. Trump addressed the loss from the Oval Office and made clear the White House would keep working the problem through other tools.
"We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright. It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision. So we're making adjustments because it's very unfair."
Those adjustments came fast. On Aug. 6, Trump signed two further executive orders. One expanded categories of U.S.-born children treated as ineligible for automatic citizenship to include children of “alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments.” The second directed the State Department to issue rules and guidance to stop birth tourism.
That sequence fits a wider pattern of using executive and diplomatic levers when a single court ruling does not settle the underlying policy fight, the same posture seen when the Supreme Court restored power to remove illegal immigrants from voter rolls.
In September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new visa restriction policy under the Immigration and Nationality Act. It targets people who knowingly engage in, have engaged in, or facilitate birth tourism to the United States, including owners, operators, and managers of commercial birth-tourism networks, visa “fixers,” and foreign medical providers.
Existing rules already bar tourist visas “for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States.” The new policy is meant to hit the facilitators who profit from the trade, not only the travelers.
Rubio cast the policy as defense of citizenship, public benefits, and national security.
"The Trump administration is using every tool at our disposal to defend the integrity of U.S. citizenship, protect American public benefits and U.S. taxpayers from exploitation, and safeguard our national security."
He said restricting visas for those who engage in and profit from the practice sends a clear message that foreigners will not be allowed to exploit the immigration system or violate the sanctity of U.S. citizenship.
Fox News reported that a State Department task force launched Aug. 12 had already revoked more than 750 visas tied to suspected birth tourism as of late August, tying the CNMI suspension to that wider crackdown.
Enforcement pressure of that kind tracks other removal and case-management fights, including how the administration has deported more than 25,000 people to countries they never came from when return options are constrained.
The administration’s stated aims are straightforward: defend the meaning of U.S. citizenship, protect public benefits and taxpayers from exploitation, and reduce security exposure from lightly vetted travel into a U.S. territory next to Guam.
Senators described a cottage industry. DHS pointed to espionage and illegal onward travel risk. Schweizer’s figures, if even roughly right, describe a long-running transfer of citizenship status to children raised abroad inside another country’s political system, with voting and federal employment rights waiting at adulthood.
None of that requires rewriting the 14th Amendment in a single stroke. It does require closing the easy doors: parole shortcuts, commercial networks, and visa channels used as a product for sale.
Related demographic and representation fights are moving on a parallel track, including a push for a rule to drop noncitizens from the 2030 census, another front where citizenship status and political power meet.
Court process still matters. Separate high-court action has also blocked bids to let immigration judges shelve deportation cases, keeping removal authority from being parked indefinitely inside the bureaucracy.
The Northern Marianas suspension will not, by itself, end birth tourism across the United States. It does shut a known, documented pathway that grew from a handful of births a year into hundreds, under a parole design left in place for more than a decade.
Citizenship is not a travel package, and American taxpayers are not a backup plan for foreign elites gaming the map.
