China has been shipping pregnant women to American soil to manufacture citizens for decades.
Now one governor just made Florida the first state to say no and back it up with the force of law.
What DeSantis signed Friday is the kind of legislation that makes Beijing furious – and that tells you everything you need to know.
China Has Been Running This Play for Decades and Florida Just Stopped It
The Foreign Interference Restriction and Enforcement Act – the FIRE Act – does something no other state has had the guts to do.
It makes gestational surrogacy contracts void and unenforceable if any party is a citizen of a foreign country of concern.
China is named explicitly.
This is not a small thing.
Federal prosecutors have documented the birth tourism industry for years – Chinese operators charging families $40,000 to $80,000 apiece to fly to California, hide their pregnancies from customs agents, and give birth in American hospitals before flying home with brand new U.S. citizens.
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One California operator, Dongyuan Li, served more than 500 Chinese birth tourism customers before federal agents shut her down.
She received $3 million in wire transfers from China in just two years.
That was one operation in one city.
Border Czar Tom Homan put the real scope in plain English this past April: birth tourism from China and Russia has produced hundreds of thousands of American citizens now living on foreign soil, raised in foreign schools, under foreign governments.
Republican lawmakers in Congress have cited estimates as high as 1.5 million Chinese nationals holding U.S. citizenship through birth tourism – citizens who will eventually return to vote in American elections and petition for their parents to receive green cards.
DeSantis called it what it is: a "seedy thing."
Florida Just Made CAIR Funding a Criminal Matter
Under the FIRE Act, no Florida charity can take money from a designated foreign terrorist organization.
DeSantis named the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood by name.
This is the codification of the executive order DeSantis signed in December 2025, when he became the first governor in American history to designate CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization at the state level.
Trump had already ordered the State Department and Treasury to begin the process of designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan as terrorist organizations in January 2026.
DeSantis moved first – and now the legislature has turned that executive order into permanent law with teeth.
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Think about what that means on the ground: the next time a Florida charity routes money to an organization with Muslim Brotherhood ties, that is not a paperwork violation anymore.
The FIRE Act makes it criminal.
Crimes committed to benefit a foreign government or terrorist organization can now be reclassified as high as a life felony carrying a mandatory 15-year minimum sentence.
Florida school voucher funds are now blocked from flowing to any school affiliated with a terrorist organization.
Any charity seeking placement on the state's Honest Services Registry must certify that no terrorist organization is shaping its message.
What Every Other Governor Should Be Watching
DeSantis signed this bill at the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami – a deliberate choice.
Bay of Pigs veterans stood on the stage as he declared it was time for the Cuban communist dictatorship to be "out to pasture once and for all."
The symbolism was intentional, and so was the timing.
President Trump signed an executive order on May 1 declaring Cuba's policies a national emergency.
Secretary of State Rubio announced sanctions against the Cuban military's business empire just one day before DeSantis signed the FIRE Act.
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Florida and the Trump administration are running a coordinated maximum pressure campaign – and the FIRE Act is Florida's piece of it.
The FIRE Act terminates all existing sister city agreements with foreign countries of concern starting July 1.
It repeals the Florida-China Linkage Institute. It strips out the provision that let foreign students from adversarial nations qualify for in-state tuition.
Every one of those was a quiet channel that China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia have been using to embed themselves in Florida institutions for years.
DeSantis just closed them all at once.
The question is which governors are paying attention – and which ones are still letting Beijing build its future army of citizens one surrogacy contract at a time.
Sources:
- Michelle Vecerina, "DeSantis signs 'FIRE Act' targeting 'birth tourism,' foreign and terrorist influence in Florida," FL Voice News, May 8, 2026.
- Governor's Press Office, "Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation to Protect Florida Against Foreign Influence and Hostile Foreign Actors," Florida Governor's Office, May 8, 2026.
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "Chinese national pleads guilty to running 'birth tourism' scheme," ICE Press Release, January 24, 2025.
- Tom Homan, remarks on Fox News, April 4, 2026, as cited by FactCheck.org.
- Reps. Chip Roy and Tom Tiffany, letter to DHS, State Department, and Interior Department, March 9, 2026.
- CBS Miami, "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis designates CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood as 'foreign terrorist organizations,'" December 11, 2025.
