As the Supreme Court considers a challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, new findings from award-winning investigative journalist Peter Schweizer about how China abuses the U.S. law could have major implications for the case. 

In his new book, "The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon", which was released to the public on Tuesday, Schweizer examines the role of both China and Mexico in encouraging illegal immigration to the United States as well as how the Chinese government has apparently abused U.S. birthright citizenship. 

Citing data from the Chinese government and independent assessments, Schweizer and his research team estimated between 750,000 and 1.5 million Chinese received U.S. citizenship in the last 13 years by exploiting the birthright citizenship laws–a loophole that has been called “birth tourism.” 

Chinese birth tourism has been a longstanding concern, but the new estimates of the scale, Schweizer believes, are relevant to the Supreme Court’s current deliberations on whether President Trump has the authority to narrow the definition of birthright citizenship under U.S. law.

Chinese birth tourism "on industrial scale"

“What I think people don't get right about birthright citizenship is how and why it's happening. The assumption is, you know, people are kind of sneaking across the border, and then they get pregnant, they happen to have a child, and it's sort of something that just happens,” Schweizer told Just the News. 

But, he said, “It's actually highly organized, particularly by the Chinese government,” which has “created a system whereby it's happening on an industrial scale.”

“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 told the Just the News, No Noise TV show in an episode that aired Tuesday.

The estimates cited by Schweizer in the new book, by Chinese authorities and scholars, range anywhere from750,000 to 1.5 million Chinese who are also, through birthright citizenship, U.S. citizens. Shen Sun, the owner of the California-based Own Visa Inc, who helped secure visas for thousands of babies to travel back to China with their Chinese parents, told The Nation the number of births to Chinese parents in the U.S. was likely between 50,000 to 80,000 per year between 2012 and 2016. 

Implications for Trump’s executive order? 

The findings could have major implications for President Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025 executive order, which sought to curtail birthright citizenship for people born in the country if their parents are in the country either illegally or temporarily. The administration argues that this class of individuals are outside the “jurisdiction” of the United States, which is a component of birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.  

The order faced immediate challenges from several quarters, and the Trump administration has asked the court to review two of the key cases. It is the first of the pair that the high court agreed to consider this term. In Barbara v. Trump, Joseph N. Laplante, a federal district court judge in New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction stopping the administration from enforcing the order against babies born on or after Feb. 20, 2025, SCOTUSblog reported.  

So far, the Justices have not acted on the administration’s petition in the companion case, Trump v. Washington, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled the executive order is “invalid” for contradicting “the plain language” of the Fourteenth Amendment, the outlet also reported. 

The Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868 following the American Civil War. One section of that amendment, known as the Citizenship Clause, says that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

The measure was designed to nullify the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that descendants of slaves are not entitled to protection under U.S. courts because they are not U.S. citizens, holding that slaves were "property" under the Fifth Amendment, and that any law that would deprive a slave owner of that property was unconstitutional. That holding was eventually overturned by passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery and granted citizenship and equal protection to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S.

The definition of birthright citizenship was later refined in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens.” In that case, the court rejected the government’s argument that Wong Kim Ark, born to parents of Chinese descent, was not a U.S. citizen.  

But, the new details of how the Chinese government allegedly exploits that interpretation of birthright citizenship, Schweizer says, should give the Supreme Court pause in upholding its traditional interpretation of the amendment.

“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,” Schweizer explained. “When they turn 18, they can now vote [in the United States]. They can now get government jobs. 

“It's a massive national security issue so that, I think, is what has to be understood by the Supreme Court,” Schweizer said. 

Concerns about the phenomenon date to Obama administration

Concerns about Chinese birth tourism are not new and date back to the years of the Obama administration, when it is widely believed that the practice gained traction among Chinese citizens. 

In 2009, the Obama administration created a categorical parole program enabling Chinese citizens to visit the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) visa-free, opening the door for birth tourism there. Just this month, a group of U.S. Senators sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum warning them about this “lingering policy.” 

They said the policy “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.” Since 2009, Chinese birth tourism has exploded on Saipan, the capital island of the U.S. territory.

To give a sense of the scale, births to visiting Chinese mothers exploded from fewer than 10 per year in 2009 to almost 600 in 2018, the senators wrote. According to Schweizer’s research, more than 70% of newborns on the U.S. island come from Chinese birth tourist parents using the visa-free travel policy to secure American citizenship for their children.

Chinese nationals have also been discovered running illegal birth tourism facilities in the U.S. mainland, a problem that has persisted for years. In 2015, federal immigration officials raided several birth tourism facilities in California, which was the largest federal operation targeting the schemes at the time. At the time, The Los Angeles Times called birth tourism a “widespread practice.” 

Michael Liu and Phoebe Dong, two defendants charged in the scheme, were convicted after nine years in 2024. Prosecutors said Liu and Dong’s company “USA Happy Baby” provided several hundred birth tourists between 2012 and 2015, charging them in excess of $40,000 for accommodations and other services during their stay in California. 

Last year, another form of “birth tourism” was uncovered when police uncovered that two individuals, Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang, were raising nearly two dozen surrogate-born children at a secluded mansion outside of Los Angeles. According to ABC News' Los Angeles affiliate, in 2014, Xuan went to jail after being convicted of being "the mastermind and ringleader of a fraudulent immigration scheme" who helped file "approximately 800 fraudulent asylum applications on behalf of Chinese nationals."

Authorities were alerted to the couple when their 2-month-old son was rushed to the hospital with injuries staff suspected were signs of abuse. They found that Xuan and Zhang had contracted surrogate mothers across the United States. Many surrogates were unaware that others were also carrying children for the couple. The state and federal investigations are ongoing.

Schweizer says that it's unlikely that Xuan and Zhang’s operation represents an isolated phenomenon. He cites California state records indicating there are 107 companies that include the word surrogacy in the name, all of which are owned by Chinese individuals.