State Department Sets Up a 'Birth Tourism' Task Force to Strip Visas From Parents Who Come to the US to Give Birth

The State Department announced on Aug. 11, 2026 that it established a task force to end "birth tourism" — traveling to the U.S. to give birth so a child acquires citizenship. "As President Trump has made clear, citizenship is not a commodity to be acquired through the calculated exploitation of U.S. immigration laws," the department said. The Hill reported the step escalates the campaign against birthright citizenship, the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to children born on U.S. soil. The department said separately this week that an embassy in North Africa revoked more than 100 visas from parents it identified as birth tourists.

The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause was applied to a child of noncitizen parents in Wong Kim Ark, and the Supreme Court struck down this administration's birthright citizenship order in June 2026. A visa-side task force does not change who is a citizen at birth; it works upstream, through consular discretion over entry, where judicial review is far more limited.

Its staffing and criteria have not been published.