They travel in business class, wearing fashionable handbags over their baby bumps, not for a holiday, but to spend their pregnancy in luxury apartments and have their babies born as U.S. citizens.

Affluent expectant mothers from nations such as Russia, China, and India continue to flock to cities like Miami and Los Angeles on tourist or temporary visas with a single goal.

These mothers do not plan to remain in the U.S.; their sole aim is to secure an American passport for their newborns under the country’s accommodating yet contentious ‘birthright citizenship’ policy.

Even as the Trump administration tightens the border and cracks down on illegal immigration, a long-standing ‘loophole’ to gaining US citizenship remains open — and it’s called ‘birth tourism.’

According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), some 33,000 babies are born in the US each year to foreign mothers on short-term visas.

But the door to automatic ‘birthright’ citizenship for those born on US soil is closing.

Donald Trump banned the automatic status in January; his order is now in a legal battle that looks set to end up in the US Supreme Court.

Until then, birth tourism will flourish in a legal gray zone, with elite clientele forking over tens — even hundreds — of thousands of dollars on shady agencies, says expert Andrew Arthur.

‘Birth tourism agencies continue to be run by a bunch of crooked, profit-seeking companies,’ says Arthur, a CIS researcher and former House oversight committee analyst.

‘It’s proving increasingly controversial under the Trump administration, which seeks to end birthright citizenship, but it still goes on, and it’s something we need to stamp out.’

It comes as it was this week revealed a couple who had 21 surrogate children including 17 toddlers in their mansion didn’t tell surrogates about the huge army of youngsters they were building.

These shifty agencies offer everything from luxury beachfront apartments and private hospitals to bilingual nannies, chauffeur-driven cars, and pleasure cruises for the moms-to-be.

A Daily Mail investigation found Miami-based AIST USA remains in business, even as other agencies have shuttered.

The firm promotes itself to Russian speakers, with prices starting at $15,000 and packages with business class flights, luxury vehicles and leisure activities upwards of $60,000.

The payoff, says the firm’s website, is birthright citizenship — a child who enjoys free higher education, government-backed loans, other welfare perks, and visa-free travel to 174 countries.

Russians, meanwhile, can only travel to some 114 countries without a visa.

A US passport confers other advantages. Once the child turns 21, he or she can apply for ‘green card’ immigration status for the parents.

‘It is difficult to imagine a more profitable investment in the future of the baby… than childbirth in the US,’ says AIST’s website.

Meanwhile, a widely-shared post targeting Chinese couples promises passports and educational chances — and claims to have helped some 10,000 parents achieve their dreams.

‘Your baby can have dual nationality of the US and China — what a privilege,’ says Sophia, the woman advertising her service.

‘Now you know why celebrities choose to give birth in the US.’

Some of the agents who ran ‘birth tourism’ rackets are behind bars, and such firms as Miami Mama and USA Happy Baby that helped scores of women deliver in the US have been closed.

Miami Mamma serviced the well-heeled ‘wives of dignitaries, oligarchs, and celebrities’ from Russia, according to a bombshell 2022 Senate committee report.

Meanwhile, Ada International assisted a stream of Chinese moms-to-be at ‘upscale’ digs in Irvine, California, with pools, spas and regular shopping trips and excursions, it said.

California prosecutor Joseph McNally has warned of the treat birth tourists pose to the US.

He cited a case where a child born in Irvine in 2015 to a Chinese mother went back and joined the Chinese military at age 20, but still had a US passport.

‘That provides a real national security asset to China. And a real problem to the United States,’ McNally said in March.

While many pay their own medical bills in cash, critics say US taxpayers are still left with the burden when birth tourists overstay visas or leave hospitals with unpaid bills.

Although there have been scattered cases of authorities arresting operators of birth tourism agencies for visa fraud or tax evasion, coming to the US to give birth is fundamentally legal.

Many maternity tourism firms operate in plain sight, but officials say proving intent to give birth for citizenship — and not just visiting while pregnant — is legally tricky.

Expectant moms are often open about their intentions when applying for visas and even showed signed contracts with doctors and hospitals.

Still, that’s gotten harder since the first Trump administration tightened the rules for visitors in 2020.

Pregnant women find it harder to get US visit visas nowadays, and airline staff quiz expectant moms about their plans before letting them fly stateside.

Federal raids in recent years have uncovered elaborate operations, including busts on more than a dozen homes used by birth tourism operators across Southern California in 2015.

The agencies USA Happy Baby and You Win USA, which saw Chinese parents pay up to $40,000 to give birth in the Golden State, were shuttered in the operation, and roughly a dozen operators were jailed.

Michael Wei Yueh Liu, who headed the racket, was jailed for three and a half years in December, while his wife Phoebe Dong received a 41-month sentence, in January.

They were convicted at trial of money laundering.

Jurors heard how they coached women on what to say in their visa interviews, and to wear loose, bump-hiding clothing and to not ‘waddle like a penguin’ through the departure longe.

But with enforcement uneven and demand high, the industry continues to thrive — driven by families who see a US passport as an insurance policy.

Steven Camarota, the research director for CIS, says well-connected Russians and Chinese are highly motivated.

‘Those from a country where the government can seize your bank account at a moment’s notice, an American baby looks like a backup plan,’ says Camarota.

Now, Senator Marsha Blackburn is leading the charge to outlaw the practice, with her the Ban Birth Tourism Act.

Her proposed bill, which has not yet been voted on, would deny birthright citizenship to children born to foreign nationals on tourist visas, closing the legal loophole that has allowed the trade to flourish.

The Tennessee Republican says it would stop foreigners from ‘adversaries like Communist China and Russia from buying American citizenship for their children’.

But the multimillion-dollar industry’s bigger challenge comes from Trump’s executive order, which seeks to wholesale end birthright citizenship.

If the order is allowed to stand, some foreigners could still travel to the US to access decent healthcare, but those seeking a passport for their offspring would not bother.

Trump’s order has been challenged in court as a violation of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment, and was blocked this month from taking effect by a New Hampshire federal judge.

Even Trump’s order feds off its legal challenges, says Camarota, birth tourism won’t disappear overnight.

America is ‘very decentralized’, he says. Birth certificates are issued by individual states, and currently, parents are not asked about their nationality.

While red states could enact laws to require citizenship tests, it seems unlikely that California, New York and other blue states would follow suit, Camarota says.

As lawmakers wrangle over immigration reforms and the courts weigh Trump’s next legal steps, the reality on the ground is clear:

For the global elite, America is more than a destination — it’s a delivery room with citizenship included.