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.
Because the women who are paid to bear Chinese babies give birth in the United States, the children born through this expensive and controversial practice are automatically granted U.S. citizenship under current law.
Shortly after taking office for the second time, Trump issued an executive order mandating that children with mothers who were in the country either illegally or legally on a temporary visa at the time of their birth be denied citizenship unless their father is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident. The constitutionality of that executive order is currently awaiting a Supreme Court ruling.
But the growth in Chinese nationals who are relying on American surrogates raises thorny questions about birthright citizenship, national security, medical ethics, and who exactly, in a foreign surrogacy situation, is a child’s “progenitor” under the law.
“America has everything. America is a good country — as long as you know what you want,” one Chinese birth tourism agent based in California, where a bustling surrogacy industry serving people from China has cropped up, told NPR in 2022. “Having children in the U.S. will always bring advantages, because America is a country for immigrants.”
Among these advantages are U.S. citizenship, which the cofounder of one such surrogacy service says has actually become more attractive to Chinese nationals as tensions between China and the United States heighten. Many of the clientele seeking surrogate babies with American citizenship are “high-level communist party officials and celebrities,” another anonymous surrogacy agent told NPR.
Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rick Scott (R-FL) sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi in February calling on her to investigate the surrogacy centers serving Chinese nationals in California, citing reports that 107 Chinese-owned surrogacy agencies operate in Southern California alone. Commercial surrogacy is illegal in China.
Joseph McNally, then-acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, claimed in March 2025 that this “system” birthed 30,000 Chinese babies into American citizenship.
‘Globe-trotting designer babies’
Whether the president’s January 2025 executive order applies to children born under these circumstances will likely hinge on the definition of one word in its text.
The order defines “mother” and “father” as the “immediate female [and] immediate male biological progenitor[s]” of the child. What exactly is meant by “progenitor,” however, has not subsequently been discussed by the White House.
“Uninhibited birth tourism poses a tremendous cost to taxpayers and threatens our national security. President Trump’s Executive Order ends this practice and is consistent with the policies of most countries around the world,” a White House spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner in December 2025 when asked about the issue of foreign surrogacy, declining to elaborate on how the executive order was meant to apply to children born to surrogates.
Even if the Supreme Court upholds Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, foreign babies born to American surrogates will still likely generate future legal battles, said Daniel Di Martino, an immigration expert and fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
“Birthright citizenship as it is now is geographic, not genetic, so the question is not who the biological parents are but where the child was born. This includes, for example, adopted children,” Di Martino told the Washington Examiner. “However, the Trump birthright citizenship EO restricts it to children of U.S. citizens and permanent residents using the word ‘biological progenitor.’ While the surrogate mother is not the genetic mother, the applicability of the EO will depend on the meaning of ‘progenitor’ since the surrogate mother, after all, did contribute to creating the child, so, in the case that the EO is found to be constitutional, this particular case will likely generate further lawsuits.”
If the administration insists on a genetic definition of “progenitor” in enforcing its birthright citizenship policy, then Chinese nationals could use donor eggs and sperm from U.S. citizens to pay surrogates to give birth to babies who are, legally speaking, citizens. Opting to identify the “progenitor” as the woman who serves as the surrogate, meanwhile, would effectively allow Chinese nationals to rent the wombs of citizens to birth U.S. citizens while using their Chinese eggs and sperm, as they have long been doing.
Some have floated the idea that Trump’s order may apply to the “intended or adoptive parents of the child,” meaning at least one intended parent would need to be a U.S. citizen in order for a baby born in America via surrogate, even one who is created using the donated eggs and sperm of American citizens, to receive birthright citizenship.
“That’s an open question for our brave new world of globe-trotting designer babies,” Ilya Shapiro, Manhattan Institute director of constitutional studies, told the Washington Examiner when asked how Trump’s executive order, if allowed to stand, may affect surrogate children. “It’s unclear what the answer would be under existing law, but I would hope that, if the executive order survives Supreme Court review, the relevant authorities would issue clarifying regulations on this and other potentially tricky legal issues.”
Unknown donors, unknown status
The prevalence of anonymous egg and sperm donors could also complicate the implementation of Trump’s order, as tying the citizenship status of a newborn birthed by a surrogate to the unknown citizenship status of his or her biological parents could prove legally and logistically troublesome. Additionally, Trump’s executive order only refers to mothers who are in the U.S. at the time of their child’s birth, creating further ambiguities for Chinese nationals who deposit their genetic material in the U.S. but stay in China for the duration of their child’s gestation in the womb of an American surrogate.
“The EO refuses proof of citizenship only to individuals whose biological mothers were in the United States illegally or in temporary status,” David Bier, the Cato Institute’s director of immigration studies, told the Washington Examiner. “If the biological mother was an egg donor in China, not here illegally or in temporary status, the order would not affect the citizenship of the child, and the child would be a US citizen by birth. The burden of proof to obtain a passport or other proof of citizenship is on the applicant, so someone who cannot prove their parent’s status would not be able to obtain proof of citizenship.”
Bier went on to question the constitutional basis of Trump’s executive order, explaining that “temporary visitors and illegal aliens obviously are subject completely to the laws of the United States,” which would make them eligible for citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
“Surrogate children in the United States would not be excluded from the jurisdiction of the United States by virtue of their foreign parents any more than an adoptee would be, so the Constitution guarantees them U.S. citizenship by birth,” he said.
Proponents of Trump’s efforts to limit birthright citizenship, meanwhile, maintain that the framers of the 14th Amendment never intended for it to apply to the children of foreigners.
Regardless of the legal merits of Trump’s order or the possible troubles with its implementation, China hawks worry that the growing number of U.S. citizens raised by Chinese nationals could pose internal security problems down the line.
“China is creating arguably a million or maybe more Chinese Communist Party loyal American citizens through surrogacy, through birth tourism,” Michael Lucci, CEO of the national security organization State Armor, told the Washington Examiner. “It would not be very hard to sprinkle them across the swing states and just determine who the president is going to be based on who they favor.”
Lucci said that the 1 million figure he cited came from conservative author Peter Schweizer, who says he based his estimate on data collected by the Chinese government. Schweizer has pointed out that getting an exact figure is impossible, as U.S. birth certificates don’t record the nationality of a child’s parents.
Lucci highlighted the ability of these Chinese-raised American citizens to purchase land near military installations as another possible national security risk.
CHINESE MONEY SEEPS INTO EVERY LEVEL OF AMERICAN POLITICS
“There is a former Chinese national who became an American citizen who owns two golf courses straddling Barksdale Air Force Base,” he said. “Really, it’s one on each end of the runway. But the problem is, how do you get him out of there now that he’s an American citizen? Imagine if you have a million American citizens loyal to the CCP. They could just go buy up properties around our most sensitive bases, critical infrastructure, all sorts of things like this.”
Congress regulating the surrogacy industry, Lucci argued, is one way to address these threats. He pointed to legislation in Florida that would bar residents from entering into surrogacy contracts with people from “countries of concern,” such as China, as a blueprint for congressional action.
