by WorldTribune Staff, March 26, 2025 Real World News
Chinese nationals are using the largely unregulated U.S. surrogacy industry, specifically in California, to literally rent the wombs of American women to have babies who are instant U.S. citizens and then take them back to China, a report said.
Clients pay around $200,000 to do the surrogacy process in the U.S., and roughly $70,000 goes to the surrogate, according to the March 21 report by NewsNation.
The Trump Administration is cracking down on the scheme which has been going on for decades.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Joseph McNally told NewsNation the practice is gravely concerning, and pointed to a case in Irvine where a baby born to a Chinese national ended up growing up to join the Chinese military but still had a U.S. passport.
“That provides a real national security asset to China. And a real problem to the United States,” McNally said.
Parham Zar, owner of the Egg Donor and Surrogacy Institute in Beverly Hills, told NewsNation that at one point 90 percent of their clients were Chinese.
“Many websites offer language options in English and Mandarin or even in Mandarin only; employ doctors, administrators, and case workers who hail from China; and in some instances show two office locations: one in California and one in mainland China,” the report states.
Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman called the scheme “incredibly strange and dystopian,” according to NewsNation.
“Because of advances in technology, lax surrogacy laws, and the incorrect understanding of the 14th Amendment, countries are now using international surrogacy programs to rent wombs in America,” Hagemen said.
“I just think we need to be having a national dialogue as to whether we think this is ethical, whether we think that this is appropriate. Whether we should be interpreting our own laws to be allowing the buying and selling of children essentially or the buying and selling of wombs,” she added.
The report also pointed to an ongoing illegal underground “baby farm” industry in California.
Law enforcement is working to crack down on the practice in which Chinese nationals pay large sums to have pregnant Chinese women taken into the U.S. to give birth, which has been happening for at least a decade, NewsNation journalist Brian Entin reported.
Officials told Entin that illegal Chinese birthing agencies will organize trips to California and charge at least $100,000 and that couples are often housed in luxury apartments and mansions in the suburbs of Los Angeles, which neighbors call “baby farms.” California hotels and motels have also reported seeing many Chinese pregnant women, and say some would come and stay for months before giving birth.
McNally told Entin this “system” has led to the births of at least 30,000 Chinese babies into U.S. citizenship.
“These were criminal enterprises that operated here in the United States and also people in China who would recruit,” McNally said. “The organizers here had contacts at hospitals and had contacts there. It was an industry. The organizers of these schemes were responsible for the birth tourism of thousands of babies. They had a system in place.”
Support Free Press Foundation
