Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rick Scott (R-FL) are calling for a federal investigation into surrogacy centers operated by foreigners following alarming reports of Chinese nationals fathering dozens of U.S.-born children in massive surrogacy scams.
The disturbing phenomenon garnered mainstream attention this year after the media reported on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official Guojun Xuan and his partner Silvia Zhang, who allegedly took advantage of California’s unregulated surrogacy industry to have at least 26 children using Xuan’s sperm and an anonymous egg donor.
Breitbart News Senior Contributor Peter Schweizer wrote about Xuan’s alleged surrogacy scheme in The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, detailing how Chinese elites use the U.S. surrogacy industry to secure birthright citizenship for their children.
Records reviewed by Schweizer indicate that there are at least 107 Chinese-owned companies containing the word “surrogacy” in California alone.
In a Thursday letter penned to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Cotton and Scott pointed to the recent reports of Chinese-run surrogacy agencies, saying they “cater almost exclusively to wealthy Chinese clients, and some are affiliated with Chinese state-owned entities.”
“Chinese nationals pay women living in the United States more than $50,000 to serve as surrogates,” the senators explained. “The children are born on United States soil and granted automatic citizenship. And in most cases, the infants are promptly flown to China and raised there under the direct influence of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Xuan and Zhang amassed more than two dozen children by creating their own agency, Mark Surrogacy, located in their multimillion-dollar home in Arcadia. The surrogates involved say they did not know that the couple had more than one other child.
“My client was led to believe that this was a couple who had one child and wanted to have one more,” said Pamela DeCamp, attorney for surrogate Melissa Epps. “She had no idea they wanted dozens of children and would never have wanted to do that if she knew.”
Authorities unveiled the alleged scam in 2025 after a two-month-old infant in Xuan’s care was hospitalized with head injuries, prompting investigators to discover more than two dozen other children — ranging from infants to teenagers.
At least five more children have been born via surrogacy since the couple’s arrest, according to reports cited by the New York Post. Xuan and Zhang are reportedly out on bond while a state child abuse investigation is ongoing.
There is now an ongoing legal battle, with some of the surrogate mothers fighting for custody of the children they birthed after discovering the couple’s alleged scheme, and Xuan and Zhang filing lawsuits against at least two expecting surrogates who had allegedly cut off contact with them since their arrest.
According to Schweizer’s research, Xuan has served for decades as a deputy of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional People’s Congress, a branch of the Chinese government’s National People’s Congress. In the United States, Xuan also serves in senior leadership positions of several organizations controlled by the CCP and Chinese intelligence services called the United Front Work Department, including the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, where he serves on the executive committee.
In another unsettling twist, those close to the couple claimed that Xuan had an obsession with one of his offspring becoming the next president of the United States.
“Several of the children were named after prominent U.S. politicians and foreign leaders — which Song suggested was out of jealousy, since Xuan isn’t a ‘natural-born’ American and cannot run for president,” the New York Post detailed. Song had been an aide to the couple.
A report from the New Yorker also alleges that Xuan’s behavior had carried business cards claiming to be a “Trump Doge Member,” “an Official Trump Cabinet Member,” and a “Trump Advisor,” while not having ties to the administration.
In another instance referenced in the senators’ letter to Bondi, “a single Chinese billionaire has fathered more than 100 American-born children through this process, with the explicit goal of producing male heirs who hold U.S. passports.”
“These children will eventually be eligible to vote in American elections, access sensitive positions, or otherwise advance Beijing’s interests, all while owing their allegiance to the CCP,” Cotton and Scott warned.
“This not only exploits our current immigration and citizenship laws, but also raises serious concerns whether this is a deliberate, long-term strategy by an adversary to ideologically and systematically undermine the United States,” the letter continued. “This practice poses a serious national security risk.”
Giving the Department of Justice (DOJ) a deadline of March 13, the senators asked investigators to answer the following questions:
- Has the DOJ identified any potential violations of federal statutes — including but not limited to immigration fraud, human trafficking, or foreign-agent registration requirements — by foreign-owned surrogacy agencies or their clients?
- What is the DOJ’s current estimate of the total number of surrogacy clinics and agencies operated by foreign nationals nationwide?
- Of those clinics and agencies, how many are owned or primarily controlled by Chinese nationals?
A billboard truck was spotted earlier this month in front of China’s U.S. Embassy in Washington, DC, calling out surrogacy and birth tourism scams.
One side of the truck displayed a poster for Schweizer’s book, while the other side displayed: “BIRTH TOURISM” and “1 million born on U.S. Soil, raised in Communist China, can vote in American Elections.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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