House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has subpoenaed a doctor accused of running a sprawling birth tourism operation out of South Florida, escalating a congressional probe into the industry ahead of a Sept. 1 hearing.
The subpoena targets Dr. Wladimir Lorentz, founder and chief medical officer of a Miami-based business called Have My Baby in Miami, which markets services to foreign nationals seeking to give birth on U.S. soil. Comer said Lorentz’s attorney had declined to make him available voluntarily, citing a pending criminal probe by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
Comer rejected that explanation in his subpoena letter. “As the Founder and Chief Medical Officer of a company doing business as ‘Have My Baby in Miami,’ your knowledge regarding the company’s marketing practices and direct observations relevant to the birth tourism industry is vital to the immediate investigation,” the letter read. Comer went further, warning against any delay. “Given the national security concerns raised by birth tourism, delaying the hearing or deferring your testimony to some unknown date in the (potentially far) future would be an extraordinary action that would curtail the Committee’s ability to glean valuable information that will inform its oversight and further its legislative goals,” he wrote.
The hearing falls under a task force led by Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, which sits inside the Oversight Committee and has spent recent months examining what its members describe as institutional abuses. The panel previously drew attention for hearings on the Smithsonian Institution’s teaching of American history and on diversity, equity and inclusion practices at the American Bar Association.
Gill tied the birth tourism hearing to broader security concerns. “A growing industry is openly marketing American citizenship to foreign nationals who travel here for the express purpose of giving birth on U.S. soil,” Gill said. “This abuse of our immigration system also raises serious national security concerns, particularly given the number of birth tourists traveling from adversarial nations like China and Russia.”
Alongside Lorentz, the task force has lined up testimony from Dr. Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies. Dr. Julio César Novoa, medical director and owner of a separate company called International Maternity Services, was also invited to appear.
Birth tourism refers to the practice of foreign nationals entering the U.S. on temporary visas for the purpose of having a child who automatically gains American citizenship at birth. President Donald Trump targeted the practice through executive order after the Supreme Court struck down his broader effort to curb birthright citizenship, separately banning specific categories — including children born to foreign government workers — from automatic citizenship.
Have My Baby in Miami’s website and social media accounts have since gone dark. A YouTube page connected to the business still describes helping clients “deliver in Miami,” live in the U.S. during pregnancy, and understand “how much it costs to deliver in the United States,” adding that children born in the country “with rare exceptions” gain citizenship. A Local 10 report out of Florida, drawing on the company’s now-deleted pages, said the business had touted helping deliver 2,000 babies.
