Houston-Area Birth Tourism Center Shut Down In Legal Action

Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times,

A birth tourism operation in the Houston area has agreed to close in a settlement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Friday.

The center “unlawfully facilitated over 1,000 births to foreign Chinese nationals,” Paxton posted on X.

Paxton’s office first sued the operation in late April, stating the De’Ai Postpartum Care Center primarily helped Chinese nationals travel to Texas to give birth and secure U.S. citizenship for their children.

The center had operated for years across multiple Houston-area properties. Locations included sites in Sugar Land, Houston, Richmond, and Rosenberg, according to details from the original state lawsuit.

Gov. Greg Abbott on July 21 ordered Texas state agencies to start investigating and eliminating illegal birth tourism schemes and hold accountable any licensed healthcare providers that participate in them.

“Texas will not tolerate the exploitation of our immigration laws by individuals traveling to the United States illegally or under false pretenses to give birth and secure citizenship for their child,” Abbott said in a statement at the time.

The De’Ai Postpartum Care Center did not respond to The Epoch Times after multiple attempts to contact them. The De’Ai Postpartum Care Center did not appear to maintain a public website in English, but it had two Chinese-language websites that have since been closed.

State investigators described facilities at the center that could house multiple families and an operation that was capable of handling up to 20 births per day, according to the attorney general’s office.

“The Center’s scheme not only facilitated an invasion of Texas, but it also involved shielding and facilitating violations of immigration law. Birthright citizenship is a scam that threatens national security, and I will do everything in my power to stop unlawful ‘birth tourism’ schemes like this one.” Paxton said in an April 29 statement.

The lawsuit alleged the center coached clients on how to navigate immigration procedures and evade laws when seeking visas and citizenship for themselves and their children. That alleged coaching included encouraging Chinese nationals to conceal that the primary purpose of their travel was to give birth.

“To make matters worse, operators of the Center were aware that U.S. visas are prohibited for birth tourism purposes,” Paxton’s office said in a statement after filing the lawsuit.

“In fact, just last week, the Center noted that the federal government is ‘strictly’ policing birth tourism and recommended that women apply for visas ‘before pregnancy’ in order to avoid detection,” his office stated at the time.

Expectant families could spend tens of thousands of dollars on the center’s services, the suit claimed. Once a child born through the operation turned 21, that child could petition for permanent residency for parents and siblings.

Marketing occurred through social media platforms, private messaging applications, word of mouth, and Chinese websites, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit noted that since Jan. 24, 2020, the United States has expressly denied tourist travel “for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States to obtain citizenship for the child,” and has maintained that all birth tourism visa applications “will be denied.”

Tom Gantert and Jill McLaughlin contributed to this report.

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