Phoebe Dong, the Rancho Cucamonga woman, who with her husband last September was found guilty of operating a “birth tourism” scheme that charged Chinese clients up to $40,000 to help them give birth in the United States and obtain birthright U.S. citizenship for their children, was sentenced Monday to more than 3 years in prison.
Dong and her husband, Michael Liu, were among more than a dozen defendants charged nearly ten years ago when the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama Administration undertook to prosecute those involved in an elaborate set of arrangements and mechanisms by which woman from foreign countries – the People’s Republic of China, Russia, Nigeria, Taiwan, Korea, Turkey and Brazil – came into the United States while hiding their pregnancies and then gave birth before leaving, conferring U.S. citizenship on their offspring in the process.
The 14th Amendment provides that any child born in the United States is an American citizen. Enterprising foreigners, the largest number being from the People’s Republic of China, have sought to exploit that Constitutional provision by assisting pregnant women, with the most numerous of those again originating in the People’s Republic of China, in coming into the country, generally on tourist visas. Once here, the women are but up in birth houses, which generally consist of large multi-bedroom single family residences or high end apartments, where the women bring their children to term.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, the motivation for these schemes varies. In many cases, those involved are looking to create a better life for their children by having them raised in the United States with the full rights and privileges of American citizenship as well as the prospect of ultimately obtaining a U.S. college education. An added bonus to this is that the women and their husbands can then use the citizenship of their child to obtain for themselves permanent U.S. residency. Another reason is the restrictions that were placed on Chinese citizens more than a generation ago, an effort by the government to control population growth in what was then the world’s most populous country by prohibiting couples from having more than a single child. Having a child in the United States is a way to get around that limitation. It has also been suggested that in some cases, birth tourism involving those from the People’s Republic of China is a form, or an auxiliary element, of espionage, as the family around a child born in the United States with full citizenship can serve as a “sleeper” unit, and can remain dormant in the United States for upwards of a generation, melding into American society, at the ready to be called into action by the Communist Chinese government at a time of its choosing.
At their four-day trial in September, Dong, who is also known as Jing Dong, (董晶), and her husband, also known as Michael Wei Yueh Liu (刘维岳), were found guilty of one count of conspiracy and 10 counts of international money laundering.
According to evidence presented by prosecutors, beginning no later than January 2012 and at least until March 2015, Liu, 59, and Dong, 47, ran a maternity house in Rancho Cucamonga and rented apartment units in Southern California to provide short-term housing and provide other services to pregnant women from China who traveled to the United States. Typically, within one or two months after giving birth, the women returned to China.
Among the services Liu and Dong provided was assistance in obtaining visas to enter the United States, customs entry guidance, housing, and transportation in the United States, as well as assistance applying for U.S. legal documents for the children of their customers.
Liu and Dong advised their customers on how to hide their pregnancies from the immigration authorities. Prosecutors convincingly argued at trial that Liu and Dong also knew or deliberately avoided learning that their customers made factual and material misrepresentations on their visa applications submitted to immigration authorities to enter the U.S.
Generally, their customers’ visa applications falsely stated that the purpose of the trip to the United States was for tourism, when it was to give birth, and the length of the stay was days or weeks, when it was in fact months. The visas also misstated the location where the customers intended to stay, which was the defendants’ maternity hotel.
Liu and Dong or their agents also advised their customers to fly to ports of entry where there was what was perceived to be less customs scrutiny, such as Hawaii, before flying to Los Angeles; to wear loose fitting clothing; to favor certain lines at customs manned by less strict agents; and on how to answer customs officials’ questions.
Liu and Dong received money from overseas and used that money to promote their scheme.
United States District Judge R. Gary Klausner on December 9, 2024 sentenced Liu to 41 months in prison. On January 31, Judge Klausner gave Dong a matching 41-month sentence and ordered her immediately taken into custody from his federal court in Los Angeles. Judge Klausner said he had reduced the sentences meted out to the couple, who had separated by the time of their trial last year, from the five-year maximum in deference to their 13-year-old son.
