Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin suggested during a Fox News appearance on Thursday that he was working to restrict pregnant women from entering the U.S., and compared them to people with infectious diseases.

Before making the comparison, Mullin said he was working with Health and Human Services on a policy, but did not offer specifics on how it would be implemented or enforced.

“Maybe you shouldn’t come into the country if you are late in your third term. We don’t allow sick individuals to come here if they are coming from an area that could possibly, come in, that could spread a disease. So there is precedent for us to look into saying it’s not safe for you to travel,” he said.

Mullin then shared a personal anecdote, seemingly attempting to justify the possible restrictions from a medical standpoint.

“I know my grandson was just recently born and her OBGYN didn’t want her flying late into her third trimester,” Mullin said while seeming to forget people can travel to the U.S. without flying.

Mullin’s comments came in response to a federal judge blocking President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to limit birthright citizenship on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman called Trump’s order “certainly unconstitutional,” and cited the Supreme Court’s June decision striking down a separate 2025 executive order that sought to limit birthright citizenship.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin suggested during a Fox News appearance on Thursday that he was working to restrict pregnant women from entering the U.S., and compared them to people with infectious diseases.

AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey

Mullin is not the first Trump administration official to suggest implementing policies to restrict pregnant women from entering the U.S. Following the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the U.S. would have to reform policies to deal with what he called “birth tourism.”

“But if you have birthright citizenship, it means if a person comes here nine months pregnant to go look around at some things, in a couple of weeks, that is the mother of a lifetime American citizen and a direct line into American cash and welfare for the rest of that child’s life,” Miller said.

Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Miller if the administration was considering banning foreign pregnant women from entering the U.S., even temporarily.

“Well, what I’m saying, Jesse, is that you have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis, because the possibility, as you said, for birth tourism, right, they do that. People come here just to have babies on American soil, and that baby gets to be a citizen for life,” Miller said.

The Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates for low immigration, estimated in 2020 that the number of birth tourism cases was 20,000 to 26,000 per year, less than 1% of the 3.61 million births in the U.S. that year.