In the days after the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship as the law of the land, an enraged Trump administration has been rigorously investigating new ways to crack down on “birth tourism,” a practice that refers to pregnant women who come to the United States solely to give birth and obtain US citizenship for their children. And to do so, they have floated an alarming option: a potential ban on pregnant foreigners.

“You have mothers that come in fully pregnant, have a baby, go home,” Stephen Miller told Fox News, as host Jesse Watters cracked about “banning foreign pregnant women” from entering the US. “That baby then gets Medicaid,” Miller continued, “and that baby gets welfare, and that baby gets cash assistance.”

In a separate Fox News appearance, wherein host Brian Kilmeade similarly suggested a blanket ban on pregnant tourists, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin seemed receptive to the idea. “It’s absolutely a national security issue,” he said, going on to describe an elaborate scenario in which Chinese nationals give birth in the US and return to China with their newly minted American citizen babies. Once there, Mullin continued, these Chinese mothers would raise US citizens in a “communist regime,” only for them to return as adults to attend American universities where they could begin “stealing intellectual property.”

It is not illegal for foreign nationals to give birth in the US. But coming to the US solely to give birth, thereby lying on visa applications or deceiving border officials, is prohibited. So too are companies that sell birth tourism schemes. But for all the warnings about the scale and vastness of birth tourism, there is scant data on the issue. “There’s no direct data on this, which is what’s creating the confusion,” Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said. “Everyone is pandering to numbers with whatever they feel like.”

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