Gregory Rosen, William Hart Discuss New DOJ Birth Tourism Enforcement Initiative with Bloomberg Law

Rogers Joseph O’Donnell, P.C. shareholder Gregory P. Rosen and of counsel William G. Hart were quoted in a July 30 Bloomberg Law article examining the Department of Justice’s plans to increase enforcement against “birth tourism” following the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Trump administration’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship.

The article reports that the DOJ has directed U.S. attorneys’ offices and its Criminal Division to prioritize prosecuting birth tourism schemes, a shift that follows a memo from Colin McDonald, head of DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, stating the Department will act to protect the integrity of U.S. citizenship.

Rosen, a former senior federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, said the DOJ memo signals a broader scope of potential targets than past enforcement efforts, which largely focused on individuals and businesses that trafficked individuals rather than the immigrants themselves. He noted that the directive “exposes individuals who knowingly facilitate that industry to liability as a policy, including the people coming over themselves.”

Hart, also a former senior federal prosecutor in D.C., addressed the evidentiary challenges prosecutors may face in bringing these cases. He said that to succeed on wire fraud charges in certain of these contexts, the government “would need to prove that the individuals had the intent to unlawfully pursue a visa with the purpose of having the child born in the United States.”

The full Bloomberg Law article can be found here.