President Donald Trump’s effort to rein in what he views as abuse of the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision could be hamstrung by the surrogacy industry and its growing Chinese customer base, experts told the Washington Examiner.

Wealthy Chinese families and individuals are increasingly turning to the U.S.’s booming surrogacy sector to have their biological babies born on U.S. soil — often, without the parents themselves setting foot in the country. Foreigners, the plurality of whom are Chinese, initiated nearly 5,000 pregnancies this way during 2020 alone, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report published by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. A recent Wall Street Journal investigation found that, in some cases, individual Chinese nationals have sought to commission over 100 children spread across dozens of surrogate mothers.