Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Latinos born in the southern border region are now having their U.S. citizenship put into doubt, The Washington Post reports, following claims that the Trump administration is denying them passports over accusations that their birth certificates are fakes. One of these Americans was born in Brownsville, Texas, and served for three years in the Army and later in Border Patrol.
“But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government’s response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.” The Trump administration’s reasoning is decades-old accusations that midwives along the U.S/Mexico border provided false documentation for children they delivered. In some instances in the 1990s, midwives did admit to this, but they also delivered thousands of babies in the U.S. legally.
Under these claims, some applicants were denied passports by the State Department during previous administrations, until 2009, when an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit “seemed to have mostly put an end to the passport denials.” Applicants who were denied passports were often able to successfully appeal those denials. Then Trump, who spread the racist lie that the first black U.S. president’s birth certificate was also a fake, came into power.
”Under President Trump,” The Washington Post continued, “the passport denials and revocations appear to be surging, becoming part of a broader interrogation into the citizenship of people who have lived, voted and worked in the United States for their entire lives.” U.S.-born Americans like Juan, who only gave his first name to the paper out of safety concerns.
Meanwhile, some Latino U.S. citizens have had their passports questioned on entry back into the U.S., and have even been thrown into immigration detention. “Attorneys say these cases, where the government’s doubts about an official birth certificate lead to immigration detention, are increasingly common. ‘I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,’ said Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville,” though ICE detaining Latino U.S. citizens is nothing new.
From proposing the end of birthright citizenship, to ramping up arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, to arresting immigrants who try to follow the rules by going to their green card appointments, to rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS), questioning the very citizenship of Latinos born here is just another part of Trump’s ethnic cleansing campaign—and one that it is attempting to keep as secretive as possible.
“The State Department would not say how many passports it has denied to people along the border because of concerns about fraudulent birth certificates,” The Washington Post continued. “The government has also refused to provide a list of midwives whom it considers to be suspicious.” Meanwhile, the applications who have had their passport applications denied are being asked for a ridiculous amount of other documentation to prove their citizenship, only to get denied again.
Juan said that his rejection letter from the U.S. government asked him for “obscure documentation,” like “evidence of his mother’s prenatal care, his baptismal certificate, rental agreements from when he was a baby,” which is paperwork that many people may not have access to at all. However, for some of the paperwork, he did. Still, even after sending it in, he was against denied. Now the former soldier expects to have to shell out thousands of dollars in legal help to secure a place in the very country he served.
“I served my country,” Juan said. “I fought for my country.” That doesn’t matter to the white supremacist in chief, because for him it’s never been about rule of law or about legal immigration (which he’s happily taken advantage of). It’s always been about getting people of color out, whether or not they were born here. “I'm an immigration lawyer,” tweeted Hassan Ahmad this week. “If a US citizen asked me whether they should carry around their US passport, I can no longer in good faith tell them they don't have to.”