
Somebody at Mission Regional Medical Center in Mission, Texas thought it would be a good idea to register the domain HaveMyBabyInTexas.com. They picked it up on GoDaddy for $99.99. Then they started advertising "birth packages" to foreign nationals for up to $5,525 a pop — travel to Texas, deliver your baby on American soil, leave with a U.S. citizen.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott found out. He was not amused.
Abbott ordered an investigation into the hospital on July 8, directing Texas Health and Human Services Commission Executive Commissioner Stephanie Muth to launch a full probe into whether Mission Regional was functioning as a birth tourism pipeline. His statement was about as subtle as a freight train: "American citizenship is not for sale and Texas will not permit our healthcare system to be used as a magnet for birth tourism."
The hospital sits in Mission, Texas — just down the road from McAllen, home to one of the largest Border Patrol processing centers in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. So we're not talking about some random facility in suburban Dallas that stumbled into an international maternity scheme. This is a border hospital, in a border town, that went out and bought a domain name specifically designed to break federal and state laws by attracting foreign nationals looking to secure American citizenship for their children through the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship provision.
The $5,525 birth packages were advertised openly. The domain name alone tells you everything about the intent. This wasn't a hospital that happened to treat some foreign patients — this was a business model built around monetizing American citizenship.
The hospital's spokesperson, Kathleen Avila, offered the kind of statement you'd expect from a legal team that got woken up at 4 a.m. "Like hospitals across the country and throughout the region, we share information about the healthcare services we provide," Avila said. She added that the hospital "does not support or facilitate any unlawful activity" and works "to comply with all applicable federal and state laws."
Sharing information about healthcare services. That's what we're calling a website called HaveMyBabyInTexas.com now. Just sharing information.
The broader context here matters. The Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. Barbara on the question of birthright citizenship, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has been pushing congressional action on the issue. But while Washington debates the constitutional dimensions, Abbott is doing what governors are supposed to do — using the regulatory tools already available. A state health commission investigation into a hospital's practices doesn't require a constitutional amendment. It requires a governor who picks up the phone.
Birth tourism isn't new. The loophole has existed for decades, and politicians on both sides have complained about it at fundraisers and town halls and cable news hits for just as long. What's new is a sitting governor actually treating it like a problem to be solved rather than a talking point to be recycled.
The investigation will determine whether Mission Regional violated state healthcare regulations, and what enforcement actions are available. The domain name, the pricing, the location — none of it proves illegality by itself. But it paints a picture that's hard to explain away with boilerplate about "sharing information."
A hospital bought a website called HaveMyBabyInTexas.com. The governor ordered an investigation. The hospital says it's just sharing information about healthcare services.
One of those three sentences doesn't belong with the other two.


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