Juan is a forty-year-old American citizen.
He was delivered by a midwife in Texas. He has an official American birth certificate.
Juan was a private in the United States Army for three years, worked as a Border Patrol cadet, and is currently a state prison guard.
When he went to renew his U.S. passport, he received a letter from the State Department that said they didn’t believe Juan is actually a United States citizen.
Juan is not the only American citizen that is now being denied a passport because his citizenship is in question.
According to The Washington Post, “The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies.”
The State Department claims that there have not been any changes in “policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications…the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.”
Juan is livid about the situation he is now in. He says, “I served my country. I fought for my country.”
The government claims that in the mid to late twentieth century there were midwives and physicians that gave U.S. birth certificates to babies born along the Texas-Mexico border that were not actually born in the United States, but in Mexico.
While the passport denials had reduced significantly after 2009, there has been a resurgence in the Trump era. An attorney said, “We’re seeing these kinds of cases skyrocketing.”
The State Department said, applicants “who have birth certificates filed by a midwife or other birth attendant suspected of havng engaged in fraudulent activities, as well as applicants who have both a U.S. and foreign birth certificate, are asked to provide additional documentation…individuals who are unable to demonstrate they were born in the United States are denied issuance of a passport.”
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