MIAMI — A Miami physician who built a business marketing American citizenship to foreign nationals traveling to give birth on U.S. soil sat before a congressional committee on Tuesday, September 1, and answered every substantive question the same way: by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, eleven times in total, before being dismissed from the hearing.

Who Dr. Lorentz Is, and What He’s Accused Of?

Dr. Wladimir Lorentz is the founder and chief medical officer of Miami Medical Concierge Services, marketed publicly under the name “Have My Baby in Miami.” Lorentz has claimed to have helped more than 2,000 women travel to Miami specifically to give birth, according to reporting cited ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.

Lorentz was compelled to appear under subpoena issued by the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses, chaired by Republican Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, after Lorentz had previously declined to testify voluntarily, citing advice from his attorney amid a pending federal criminal investigation into his business.

At the hearing, titled “Protecting American Citizenship: Confronting Birth Tourism,” Gill posted directly afterward: “I asked the founder of ‘Have My Baby in Miami’ about his birth tourism business. He pleaded the Fifth. Again. And again. And again.”

Jeffrey Sloman, counsel for Lorentz, was contacted for comment by multiple outlets covering the hearing.

Crackdown

The hearing arrives directly on the heels of a major Supreme Court defeat for the Trump administration’s effort to restrict birthright citizenship. On June 30, 2026, the Court ruled 6-3 in Trump v. Barbara that Trump’s January 2025 executive order seeking to deny citizenship to children born to undocumented or temporarily present parents was unconstitutional.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority and joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson, held that children born in the U.S. to parents unlawfully or temporarily present “satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause” and “are citizens at birth” under the 14th Amendment — reaffirming the Court’s 1898 precedent in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented, with Alito writing that the ruling extended citizenship “to virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of ‘birth tourists.’”

On August 6, President Trump then signed a new executive order, numbered 14418, again attempting to restrict birthright citizenship for certain categories of children — an order the ACLU, the Asian Law Caucus, the Legal Defense Fund, and the Democracy Defenders Fund are now separately challenging in court.

Republicans on Rep. Gill’s task force are now looking into birth tourism specifically, the practice of foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. for the specific purpose of giving birth so their child acquires automatic citizenship.

Gill’s office described the concern in a statement: “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. 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.”

Gill has said the task force’s goal “is to make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice.”

Miami’s Central Role in the Industry

Lorentz’s company is not the only business under scrutiny, but Miami’s specific role in the birth tourism industry has made it a focal point of the investigation.

According to reporting on the task force’s work, three other companies remain under investigation alongside Lorentz’s: International Maternity Services, Doctores Para Ti, and a California-based clinic run by a Dr. Javid.

Observers following the case are watching whether those businesses will also face subpoenas in the coming weeks. Separately, the hearing fed directly into an active legislative debate over the proposed Citizenship Act of 2026, which Republicans on the task force are advancing as their preferred legislative response to birth tourism specifically, since the executive-order route has now failed twice in court.

Hoever, the hearing was not without partisan disagreement over its underlying purpose. Democratic Representative James Walkinshaw argued that Republicans’ actual aim extended well beyond addressing birth tourism narrowly, saying the majority sought to restrict immigration more broadly.

Walkinshaw cited cases of U.S. citizens who have been wrongfully detained or deported by immigration authorities, and warned that continued efforts to reinterpret the 14th Amendment risked producing discriminatory citizenship policies more broadly, beyond the birth tourism cases the hearing was ostensibly focused on.

What Miami Residents Should Know

For Miami specifically, the case surfaces a genuine tension between the medical tourism industry — the city has for decades marketed itself as a premier destination for international patients seeking specialized care — and a narrower practice federal lawmakers are now treating as a potential criminal exploitation of immigration law.

The distinction matters for how residents understand the story: nothing in the hearing challenges the underlying constitutional principle of birthright citizenship itself, which the Supreme Court has now twice affirmed remains the law. What is under direct legal and legislative scrutiny is a specific commercial practice — businesses explicitly marketing U.S. citizenship as a purchasable service to foreign nationals — operating in and around Miami’s broader concierge medicine and international patient sectors.

Whether that distinction holds up as Congress and federal prosecutors continue their investigation, or whether the scrutiny expands to touch Miami’s much larger legitimate medical tourism industry, remains an open question the coming weeks of congressional and legal activity are likely to clarify.

With Lorentz having invoked the Fifth Amendment to every substantive question, the task force’s stated intention to pursue a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, and three additional companies still facing possible subpoenas, the investigation appears far from concluded.

Separately, the newly signed Executive Order 14418 and the proposed Citizenship Act of 2026 represent two parallel tracks — one executive, one legislative — through which the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are continuing to pursue birthright citizenship restrictions even after the Supreme Court’s June ruling, ensuring the underlying legal and political fight is likely to continue well beyond Tuesday’s hearing.