Inside the shadowy world of birth tourism at US ‘maternity hotels’

More on birth tourism, US perspective. Still relatively light on the numbers (Canadian numbers are very small – see earlier post What happened to Kenney’s cracking down on birth tourism? Feds couldn’t do it alone | hilltimes.com):

Birth tourism companies have flourished in recent years, according to federal officials — and many of them prefer hard-to-track cash to fuel their operations.

That money, federal officials allege, is being pocketed by a group of individuals who have skirted tax law, flouted immigration laws and helped their clients defraud U.S. hospitals of tens of thousands of dollars for each baby born.

On Tuesday, federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the IRS, along with the Los Angeles Police Department, conducted a massive operation to raid more than 30 California locations operated by “birth tourism businesses.” Officials collected piles of evidence that will likely be used against some of the “maternity hotel” operators in future prosecutions.

The companies advertise their services online — and no foreign language skills are necessary to guess the subtext.

…According to court documents, birth tourists were told to avoid traveling directly to Los Angeles International Airport from overseas, to avoid raising suspicion. They might even consider studying U.S. culture and booking recreational visits in order to make their travel seem more legitimate, the company advised. Alternate arrival ports such as Hawaii or Las Vegas were preferable.

You Win paid more than $60,000 a year to rent Southern California apartments that housed the women, according to court documents. Federal officials believe that StarBabyCare operated a “maternity hotel” from at least 10 units at one complex.

via Inside the shadowy world of birth tourism at ‘maternity hotels’ – The Washington Post.