By The Editorial Board Sep. 5, 2018 Updated: Sep. 5, 2018 9:21 a.m.
Do you remember when you were born? Can you produce your baptismal records? How about evidence of your mother’s prenatal care?
These are the questions increasingly being asked by the U.S. government, not of newcomers, not of migrants, but of citizens who have lived and worked in the United States their whole lives, people whose official birth records show they were born on American soil. People who are suddenly finding they can’t obtain or renew a U.S. passport because the Trump administration’s latest crackdown on the southern border is throwing their citizenship into question. And yes, they are mostly people with Hispanic surnames.
According to the Washington Post, Trump’s State Department is accusing hundreds, possibly thousands, of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies and essentially faking U.S. citizenship. The crackdown specifically targets those whose delivery involved a midwife, a long-standing tradition in the region. A few have been placed into deportation proceedings.
We are talking about U.S. citizens — including military veterans, police officers, even Border Patrol agents — whose lives, rights, and national identity have been thrust into legal limbo.
Sure, the U.S. State Department says its policy has not changed and that the rate of formal denials of passports along the southern border have not increased, and in fact, have dropped under Trump. But the administration would not provide key numbers showing how many passport applicants were required to produce extra documentation to prove their citizenship.
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