This is jawdropping:
On paper, he’s a devoted U.S. citizen.
His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.
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.
As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown on their citizenship.
They’re now just basically ignoring documentation and determining that some people are unpersons.
Duane
Taking birtherism to the next step. Keep playing the rascist oldies. There’s nothing too low for these fascists.
Radiumgirl
Racist indeed. Can you imagine them doing this to people born near the Canadian border? Next step: Challenging the citizenship of any political enemy. Wait for it, it’s coming.
Dmbeaster
I am sure the criteria for selecting these victims is simply race and birth near the border.
Mary G
This is unbearable. God, I hate them so much.
And once they’re done with the brown people, they’ll come for the disabled, and the poor white people who put so much of their hope in them.
Baud
I don’t see how this is constitutional. I hope to ACLU brings suit quickly.
NotMax
Like the so-called provisional ballot, only now we’re provisional citizens.
Jeffro
@Mary G: they’ll never come for the poor whites… it’ll be shit jobs or shock troops if they wanna eat, though
TenguPhule
@Radiumgirl:
Hispanics are the GOP’s natural political enemy.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
A
Everyone knows the Constitution only applies to citizens. /wingnut
Brachiator
Not Jawdropping at all. The Trump administration has been determined and relentless in looking for ways to exclude nonwhite people, particularly Hispanics, from having any legal right to be in the United States, or to have any access to rights and services and privileges.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
How’s your chad hanging?
TenguPhule
Donald Trump Nov 8: “Democrats are not Citzens”
Josie
This is totally about keeping people from voting.
sukabi
@TenguPhule: he’s actually very close to that right now. Has declared democrats very violent people, and so far no direct pushback from any of the groups he’s said it to.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mary G:
Yup. Martin Niemöller had it right.
Baud
Every time one of these stories comes out, I shake my head thinking about how much more angst our side had with respect to metadata collection.
Baby Blabs
@Radiumgirl:
Sorry to say, but you’re a little late: “Obama” Trump” and “birtherism”
JPL
@Baud: During Bush Jr. years they did, and won. It appears they will have to again.
Duane
@Josie: This is totally about terrorizing people. Voting is a small part of it.
JPL
A midwife delivered my second son, but not at home. She would have but if there were a problem, she would lose her license.
I didn’t want to take the chance. Since we lived in CT at the time and I’m white, I think citizenship would have been okay.
WaterGirl
Holy fuck. All this evil can’t go on much longer.
cain
@Jeffro:
No it will be the Catholics.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Thanks for those calming words.
Edmund Dantes
One of the policies started under Obama and weaponized.
burnspbesq
This is bullshit.
The immediate answer here is to sue the bureaucrats as individuals, and file motions for partial summary judgment on immunity. If the motion is granted, the bureaucrats become personally liable for damages. Let’s see how many of them are willing to put their houses on the line in order to follow unconscionable orders.
The long-term, big-picture answer is to permanently remove Republican hands from every lever of power at every level of government.
Mike in NC
In Trump’s dystopic America, you’re a non-citizen unless you’re carrying papers to surrender to the authorities on demand. Assumed to be guilty by default.
cain
You know using that standard it can all be arbitrary. They can pick and choose whomever.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Edmund Dantes: Of course it’s all Obama’s fault. Except it started during the GW Bush administration. Bit of a flaw in your logic there.
burnspbesq
ETA: oh, and go after the DOJ lawyers for Rule 11 sanctions. Put them under the microscope, too.
Mainmata
@Baud: Keep giving to the ACLU like I do. They’vve had to be so busy with this neo-Fascist Administration.
Martin
Been saying this for a while. The only way that whites remain a majority in this country is either ethnic cleansing or genocide. The most common age for whites is 58. The most common age for latinos is 11. That die was cast a long time ago. The individuals that will make the US a minority white nation are already here. It’s not just a matter of walling off the border, you’re going to have to remove millions and millions of legal citizens as well.
Either these people are stupid, or they have much worse plans in mind, or both. For one, I don’t have a doubt that Stephen Miller and Jeff Sessions have plans…
Martin
@burnspbesq: I don’t know how DOJ and DHS officials haven’t been indicted over the family separation program. They are openly in defiance of the courts.
Spanky
@WaterGirl:
Why not? What is there to stop it?
LAC
Ahhh the days when fuckers would spend time here whinging about how bad Hillary would be. ?Memories of the purity pony pinings of my mind….?
burnspbesq
@Martin:
DOJ rarely indicts its own, unless the conduct is both egregious and way beyond what can be characterized as ethically appropriate advocacy.
Contempt is a whole other ballgame. District judges have a shitload of discretion in determining what they will and won’t put up with. And the judges in LA and SD appear to be pretty pissed off.
Edmund dantes
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Based on those suspicions, the State Department began during Barack Obama’s administration to deny passports to people who were delivered by midwives in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The use of midwives is a long-standing tradition in the region, in part because of the cost of hospital care.
I’m happy for the correction if you can point me in the right direction.
But I didn’t say it was all his fault so get over yourself. Right now it reads as if it’s part of the immigration crackdown program Obama did to try to bring GOP table. Which was a fact of his administration.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator:
The thing that I find so crushingly depressing about all this is that I foresaw it 16 years ago, and I feel like I was one of the few who did. When John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira published “The Emerging Democratic Majority” all the way back in 2002, everyone at Daily Kos was jubilant about it. But the very first thought in my head when I read it was “I bet the Republicans can delay that Emerging Democratic Majority for quite a bit by introducing Juan Crow laws to suppress voting. And a very, very long time indeed if they institute apartheid laws.” And here we are.
Baud
@Edmund dantes:
FTA
Obama took office in 2009. It’s unlikely that he also started the policy given the timing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Edmund dantes: Here ya go, note the date the suit was filed – 2008.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Well, Obama does have a time machine.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You did real research. I’m impressed.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: No, just a 20 second Google search.
Adam L Silverman
@Edmund dantes: it’s actuallh reported in the WaPo article at the link that it began during the Bush 43 admin, suits were brought by the ACLU and others, and the policy continued until the suits were won during the beginning of the Obama administration. At that point the policy was phased out starting in 2009.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Don’t sell yourself short. Most people would have given up at 5 seconds.
Mart
First they came for DACA kids. Then they went after asylum seekers. Then they refused passports to naturalized Hispanics. Then they came for…
TenguPhule
@Edmund Dantes:
WRONG.
Started under the regime of Bushwhacker and ended by settlement under Obama.
TenguPhule
@WaterGirl:
They can stay evil longer then you can stay peaceful.
Baud
@Mart: Not naturalized. These people were born here. Their was some fraud involving birth certificates so they are taking a sledgehammer to everyone in the area.
TenguPhule
@Mike in NC:
And per the article, the papers are deemed fake anyway.
TenguPhule
@Martin:
Or? Don’t you mean and?
Mart
Forgot they came and got them a Supreme Court Constitutionally Approved Muslim ban… for Homeland security purposes of course.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
the first version of the article blamed the Obama admin for this. I captured it in the thread below. Wapo did not note the correction in the updated version.
VOR
@Edmund dantes: First US President ever delivered in a hospital was Ronald Reagan. Were all those previous Presidents delivered at home, probably many via a midwife, not citizens?
Edmund dantes
The policy was not phased out. It continued under Obama.
But that lawsuit resolved only the cases of people attended by midwives who didn’t have convictions for fraud. Since 1960, 75 Texas midwives have pleaded guilty to falsely registering Mexican-born babies as U.S. citizens. Further, the government has listed about 250 “suspicious” midwives accused but not necessarily convicted of fraud.
But I’ll tell the people that had court cases and passports denied after 2009 it was all a figment of their imagination.
gene108
Miller, Bannon, Trump and the rest of the anti-immigration group is to make it so only white people will be American citizens.
One of the angles Birtherism took to justify their position is Obama could not be a naturalal born citizen because both parents were not natural born citizens. A lot of people bought into the idea birth right citizenship was a bad idea and maybe illegal.
And now those folks in power are coming after citizens. They have already set up a task force to find ways to revoke citizenship for naturalized citizens.
And now this.
What truly scares me is after a national loss, for the last 50 years, Republicans go more radically conservative. If we win back government in 2020, the next wave of Republicans will be running on a platform of reinstating segregation, getting rid of birth right citizenship, and probably having mass deportations of millions of immigrants, whether here legally or not.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@TenguPhule: Wapo Revisionist history in real time! //
Omnes Omnibus
@Edmund dantes: You are moving the goalposts.
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus:
With a big rig truck to boot.
Adam L Silverman
@TenguPhule: I am not affiliated with the Washington Post.
Calouste
If someone else filled in your birth certificate 40 years ago with a made up place of birth, you still get prosecuted.
If you raped a child 40 years ago, like those priests in Pennsylvania, your crime has expired.
Welcome to America.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
I’m 5’4″, I’m used to it.
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman: Your Soros bucks say otherwise! //
gene108
@SiubhanDuinne:
But people are not keeping quiet. People have been protesting, literally, since Day One.
But nothing deters them.
@Edmund dantes:
Obama had a miss guided immigration policy. He believed, if got tough on immigration and strictly enforced existing immigration laws recalcitrant members of Congress would agree to a grand bargain on immigration giving people here illegally a pathway to gaining legal status.
He was wrong and changed course later in his administration, but the damage was done.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108:
That would be a problem for one Donald John Trump as well(as well as 4 or his 5 children).
Prometheus Shrugged
I can confirm that this is not an isolated incident. Interestingly enough, just today my wife tried to renew my son’s passport at the San Diego passport office and was told, upon being turned away from her appointment, that “the father” had to be there in person to file the renewal application. This, despite the fact that we had renewed his passport once before by mail during the Obama administration, and my wife was meticulous about making sure that all the necessary documentation was in order for her appointment today (including all my signatures, photos of me, and my personal documentation).
I’m sure the fact that i.) my wife is a naturalized citizen from Africa; and ii,) the fact that my mixed race son could easily pass for Hispanic; and iii.) the fact that I am the only white person in the family had absolutely nothing to do with this completely understandable policy of requiring me to file the renewal on my son’s behalf. Unbelievable. But it is good news for Ammar Campa-Najjar who will be getting another hefty donation from me immediately.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Edmund dantes: There was a thread here a while back where a twitter report of a woman denied a passport on these grounds and had a letter requesting additional info. You can see the type of info you can use to coorberate your application if the birth certificate is not acceptable or available at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/requirements/citizenship-evidence.html ,
What is new is the reporting of passports being seized by ICE and deportation proceedings beginning. Passport requests go through the State Department and are independent of ICE. If there is now coordination to attack citizenship with ICE this is a new and disturbing development.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@Prometheus Shrugged: Current rules for children under age 16. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/apply-renew-passport/under-16.html
If both parents are not available you have some extra paperwork to do. See the parental consent section.
Edmund dantes
@gene108: thank you. It’s all I’m saying.
I’m not moving goalposts. I had read the earlier article that was wrong as to starting with Obama, but it read right considering how misquided Obama’s policy was on immigration.
I’m sorry for that one, but the policy didn’t end with that ACLU suit. It was modified, and people still had to fight through it under Obama.
But people need to stop running around acting like any criticism is the end of the world. There were lots of real world people that were harmed by those policies under Obama’s administration. And yelling at people that it’s worse under GOP doesn’t change the experience of the people under Obama.
The Dem party needs to make it clear that we won’t be making those mistakes again.
Prometheus Shrugged
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S): Yes, we did this extra paperwork. Didn’t seem to matter to the passport agent dealing with my wife.
Steve in the ATL
@VOR: I’m ready to disclaim Johnson, Jackson, Buchanan, and Nixon, for a start.
Brachiator
@Edmund dantes: Are you saying that it is not worse under the GOP?
schrodingers_cat
@Edmund dantes: Bipartisanship on immigration gave us the horrible IIRIRA, we can trace a lot of today’s immigration enforcement regime to that law, signed by Bill Clinton and passed by the Gingrich Congress.
Rs are in complete thrall of the Tanton and his immigration restriction agenda based on spurious research by think tanks based on fear and eugenics. There can be no bipartisanship on this issue because Ds end giving and not getting much in return.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: It is worse but T has weaponized the tools that had D blessings in both Clinton and Obama’s administrations too.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat: Trump didn’t need Clinton and Obama to come up with his racist plans or his racist tools.
Ransom
How can this not be turned into a Beto campaign ad?
Sister Golden Bear
@Mary G: They’re already coming for trans people, although that’s merely denying passports rather than questioning citizenship.
Dmbeaster
@JPL: I was going to point this out. Did some reading on it and the same fight occurred in 2008 as Bush was doing the same thing. Of course, the fight back gets a boost since Trump is an open racist who does not bother with dog whistles.
Caphilldcne
@Edmund dantes: make the burden of proof on the government you despicable nazi racist.
Caphilldcne
@Edmund dantes: @Edmund dantes: @Edmund dantes: ok. This is a lot more reasonable comment than your earlier one and Obama does not get a pass but I frankly think your first comment was apologetic to the current administration. I’m also going to delete my vitriolic reaction to it.
Caphilldcne
Hey can a frontpager take off comment 78? It was not nice,did not give the benefit of assuming goodwill to the original commenter and I apologize. I can’t seem to delete. Thanks.
Aleta
When this administration is finally ridden out of town, how many court cases that never should have happened will remain, inherited by people with better things to do.
Bonnie
More waste of the taxpayer’s money.