Extra: The Multimillion-Dollar Business of Birth Tourism

0:00This is the Fox News rundown extra. I'm Jessica Rose-Widthall. A House Oversight Subcommittee tried to uncover the true scope of birth tourism this past week. At the hearing, Center for Immigration Studies Research, Director Stephen Kamerata estimated the practice may have accounted for as many as two to three hundred thousand U.S. births over the past decade. Beyond discussing how best to stop birth tourism, Republicans also raised concerns about national security risks, noting children born in the U.S. but raised abroad in countries like Russia or China could be raised with anti-American views. Democrats dismissed the hearing with Massachusetts Congressman Ionaprezli accusing Republicans of weaponizing white supremacy and the great replacement theory. Earlier this week on the Fox News rundown, we examined the issue with retired Homeland Security Special Agent Claude Arnold, who years ago investigated birth tourism operations in Southern California. We made some edits for time, but thought you might like to hear the full conversation now, so thank you for listening. If you haven't already, please follow the weekday rundown podcast. Now, here's Claude Arnold on the Fox News rundown Extra.

1:09There's this very short hearing and they called this guy, Dr. Lorenz, Vladimir Lorenz from this Miami group. He's the doctor, he's the CEO and his website, I guess, or his LLC. His DBA is, have my baby in Miami. He was supposed to be like the premier witness. His website says that he has delivered over, or his practices delivered over 2000 babies. This was supposed to be the marquee witness, but this was my, this was going to be my first question for you. Claude, when you hear the owner of this Miami-based business only appeared because he was subpoenaed, and then he refused to answer a single question at the hearing on the grounds that he could incriminate himself, what do you think of that? And this effort, really, to hold a hearing, especially since his own website, highlighted that he has, in fact, helped people have their babies in Miami. Yeah. Well, I reviewed that article.

2:09It sounds to me like he's under criminal investigation right now. So I think having him in a hearing is pretty much just performative because, you know, he's going to plead the fifth if he's under criminal investigation. You know, let the criminal investigation play out. I don't really see much point in having a hearing. But what do you think then, what do you think then of this particular individual sort of, is it, is it brazen to have such a website? Yeah, it is brazen, but that's, you know, so when, when I was a special agent in charge in Los Angeles and we were investigating these same schemes, it was the same. They all have, you know, they advertise on the web and in, you know, publications and it's like, have your baby in the US, some form of name that says exactly what they do. You know, have your, have your baby born as a US citizen.

3:12They were brazen back then that's, you know, 15 years ago and they, they remained brazen today. Isn't that interesting? I mean, does that make the investigation somewhat easier? Sure, yeah. I mean, it helps you identify them. And I think the problem is that, you know, the, the, the enforcement in regard to those laws has been based on a shift in policy based on administration. So, you know, during the Biden administration, you didn't see investigations into birth tourism, right? Because it's based on policy. If they decide, oh, we're, we're not going to question people or we're, we're not going to deny visas to people if they're coming here to have babies, then there's really nothing to enforce. Now, when you start enforcing it and then the individuals coming to have babies are lying and unstating what their reason is to come to the US, they're committing visa fraud,

4:13right? But if you're not asking the question and you don't make an issue of it, they don't have to lie, then there's no visa fraud to be enforced. You know, this gets politicized and Democrats at this hearing on Tuesday said that Republicans just want to stop it. So, the immigration, this is about white supremacy or fearing all immigrants. But based on your experience, aren't those engaged in birth tourism often wealthier folks from other countries who can afford to come here and they don't stay, right? So, they raise their children abroad. Yeah. So, the case is that I had experience with here in Southern California and it's all over the country, Northern California, New York. Probably the largest contributors are wealthy Chinese people wanting to have their children born here. And so, that raises great national security concerns, right? Because most of the wealthy Chinese millionaires, these people, they were all millionaires,

5:14they're members of the Chinese Communist Party because you don't become a millionaire in China if you're not a member of the Chinese Communist Party. So now you have members of the Chinese Communist Party because they can afford it coming here to have their babies be born as US citizens. So, I mean, you can see the potential to influence our political process. They're all US citizens that can all vote for fear. For that matter, you're born here, you could be the president of the United States someday. So, it's a huge national security concerns. And that's probably the most prevalent, I think, is Chinese, very popular with Russians as well. But there's other potential national security concerns. I mean, Chapeau Guzman, probably one of the most notorious drug cartel leaders, which of course now the Trump administration has designated those cartels as terrorist organizations.

6:18But he had two children born here in the US, in Los Angeles. I think it was in 2011, 2012. So, you know, that's a national security concern. He also had a daughter who was arrested trying to sneak into the US. She was seven months pregnant, so she too could have her baby born in the US and be US citizen. I mean, do we want drug cartels having children and grandchildren born as US citizens in the US? Like, I would say no. Yeah, what when you were actively investigating, what was the point? Did these wealthy folks want their kids to have like an escape hatch or get more, you know, access to the United States for education benefits? Or is it a darker side? Like, in order to get top secret clearance at the federal government level, for example, you need to be a citizen as well, right? Is this like a long term play by our adversaries? Or do you think it's a mixture of all of these things?

7:20I think it's a little bit of both. The immediate incentive to have children born in the US is, you know, it's easier access to education, higher education, right? But there's, it's also potential for them in the future than they could petition for their parents to come to the US legally, right? These are US citizens so when they become of age. But, you know, we know politically the Chinese government, they play the long game, right? And so it, and we know that the Chinese government encourages this with its citizens, right? It benefits them. They do. Yeah, they do. So it benefits them to have people who could influence the US political process. Did you see that when you were an active investigator? Did you see evidence of Chinese officials either openly or more quietly encouraging this?

8:25I mean, because that, if you have officials on record encouraging this, then that would say a lot, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I can't remember specifically. I don't know if it was anecdotal or, you know, might have been chatter that was heard. But I know there was information that it was encouraged by the Chinese government. When you were investigating this and you were, you were in Southern California, right? And that's where I'm from Los Angeles. Right, right. It's large populations of, yeah. What was the, what was the effort, like, what was the setup? Was it a very organized business for these sort of nice, sort of nice organizations? Yeah, it's extremely organized. Yeah. So they, they rented entire blocks. So for example, there was a place in Irvine, a nice luxury apartment complex. They rented entire blocks of this, you know, entire buildings of this apartment complex.

9:28They had cooks to cook the people that they're, you know, that they're native cuisine to make them as comfortable as possible. They provided transportation. They had, you know, nannies for, you know, after the baby was born, you know, drivers to take them on shopping trips. They really enjoyed going to, you know, luxury shopping. They're millionaires, millionaires from China. So they would, you know, go on shopping sprees and buy things. And then what was part of it that was very infuriating was many of them would skip out on their hospital bill, right? So the millionaires come here, have their babies, and then they, they would defraud the hospitals. And of course, ultimately our healthcare system and US taxpayers, because who's paying for that, right? So that they're expense for having their baby in US hospitals. They would, they would welch on the bill. Did you ever discover more about the intentions of some of these folks who were either arrested

10:35or before they left and went back? Well, you know, for the most part, the stated intention was, as you stated earlier, you know, sit there, kids are US citizens and could eventually have benefits like, you know, going to school here. I mean, that was the media interest. And so they could, you know, eventually petition for them to have legal status here. You know, if there's some organized effort by the Chinese Communist Party and government to, you know, have people to eventually have political influence, you know, they're not going to advertise that. They're not going to talk about that. Right. But come on. I mean, we know them. Right. Well, what do you think is the answer here? It's, it's not going to be revoking the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, right?

11:38The president tried this, the Supreme Court rolled against that. But a witness at the hearing on Tuesday said, consular offices don't even ask people applying for visas if they're pregnant at the time. You kind of referenced this earlier, he said prosecutions relating to birth tours and what act as a deterrent. How important is it to ask these questions? Right. So this is part of the problem when you have shifting policy, which is dependent on the, who's in office and what the administrations, you know, priorities are. And so really, it should be codified in law. There are, you know, in the immigration law, there's a series of things that make someone inadmissible to the US, you know, drug traffickers, certain crimes. There are security, national security related things like terrorists, right? They're inadmissible. But there's, there's other things like likely to become a public charge, whatever.

12:41But so you could codify in the immigration law that if your intent is to come to the country, to have a baby, that makes you inadmissible from the US. Therefore, you cannot get a visa. That way it's no longer a policy issue, right? It's not, you know, it would be in the law. Therefore, State Department would have to screen for it in the interviews, visa interviews, and obviously when someone's being admitted to the US, customs and border protection would be asking those questions, you know, are you pregnant? Because it's a layered thing, right? It happens at the time the visa is issued. They're supposed to be screened to make sure that they're legally admissible to the US. And then even when they're flying in before they even get on the plane, they're screened by CBP, and then they're screened again when they enter and they're, they're interviewed, you know, asking to be let in in the US. But the point is, if you want it to be a permanent thing where it's, you know, it's not just

13:46the whim of whatever administration is, it should be codified in the immigration national act as a class of inadmissibility, someone coming to the baby, to the US with the intent to have their, to have their baby here. And these visas, one more thing, these visas are like the B1, B2. This is like, I'm coming on business or I'm coming on tourism. This can buy you six months, so you can basically show up and you might not be showing us pregnant, but six months later, five months later, that changes. Right. And it's fairly easy to get an extension up to a year too. So so you could come for so much. And in month four or five, you could apply for an extension. I mean, you know, that's, that's possibly too. So, but if it's made a class of inadmissibility, it would be across the board for any visa, right? So, you know, if, if your intent was to come here on, on student visa and you're pregnant, right? If you're pregnant, you're inadmissible.

14:51Retired HSI special agent Claude Arnold, thank you for joining us. Thank you. You've been listening to the Fox News rundown. And now, stay up to date by subscribing to this podcast at FoxNewsPodcasts.com. Listen to AdFree on Fox News Podcasts plus on Apple Podcasts. And Prime Members can listen to the show AdFree on Amazon Music. And for up to the minute news, go to FoxNews.com.