(NewsNation) — As the battle over President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship heats up, the administration is cracking down on an underground industry in California where Chinese nationals pay big money to baby brokers who get pregnant Chinese women into the country so their babies are born U.S. citizens.
Officials say these couples are often housed in luxury apartments or large mansions in the suburbs of Los Angeles, which neighbors call “baby farms.”
Illegal Chinese birthing agencies organize the trips and charge upwards of $100,000.
The practice is nothing new, and crackdowns on these operations date back at least a decade.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally says that “system” birthed 30,000 Chinese babies into U.S. citizenship.
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“These were criminal enterprises that operated here in the United States and also people in China who would recruit,” he said. “The organizers here had contacts at hospitals and had contacts there. It was an industry. The organizers of these schemes were responsible for birth tourism of thousands of babies. They had a system in place.”
Area hotels and motels have reported seeing a number of Chinese pregnant women who would come and stay for months until giving birth.
Another popular option for more wealthy Chinese couples is the so-called “rent a womb,” where they pay American women to be surrogates. When Chinese babies are born from an American woman, they are automatically U.S. citizens but immediately return home to China.
McNally says it’s not illegal, but it’s a grave concern.
“Anytime somebody has a U.S. passport, it means they have access to the United States,” he said.
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He cited a case where a child born in Irvine in 2015 to a Chinese national went back and joined the Chinese military at age 20 but still had a U.S. passport.
“That provides a real national security asset to China. And a real problem to the United States,” McNally said.
Parham Zar, owner of the Egg Donor and Surrogacy Institute in Beverly Hills, said at one point, 90% of their clients were Chinese.
But he pushed back, saying the practice is not always ill-intentioned.
“It is a misnomer in this field that people are just coming here to be a US citizen,” he said. “I haven’t met anyone who had nefarious intentions of having a child. It takes a lot of time, effort and money to go through this process.”
Zar said clients pay about $200,000 for the surrogacy process to use American wombs.
In January, President Trump signed a controversial executive order trying to end birthright citizenship.
While it’s an uphill battle that requires changing the Constitution, it’s sparked a discussion that has exposed how birthright citizenship could be abused. Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman of Wyoming is sounding alarms.
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“Because of advances in technology, lax surrogacy laws, and the incorrect understanding of the 14th Amendment, countries are now using international surrogacy programs to rent wombs in America,” she said.
“I found it to be incredibly strange and dystopian,” she added.
“I just think we need to be having a national dialogue as to whether we think this is ethical, whether we think that this is appropriate. Whether we should be interpreting our own laws to be allowing the buying and selling of children essentially or the buying and selling of wombs.”
