ACLU Files Lawsuit Over Passport Denials To People Delivered By Midwives Near Mexico-Texas Border

Main Category: Nursing / Midwifery
Also Included In: Pregnancy / Obstetrics
Article Date: 11 Sep 2008 - 7:00 PST

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Some passports are being denied by the State Department to people if they were delivered by midwives near the Mexican border in southern Texas, the Washington Post reports. According to the Post, the State Department claims there is a history of birth certificate forgeries dating back to the 1960s in the region for children who were born in Mexico. The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed a lawsuit on behalf of nine plaintiffs in a U.S. District Court in McAllen, Texas, alleging that the government has "adopted a blanket suspicion toward one group of passport applicants ... effectively denying the passports of many for the apparent sins of a few."

According to the Post, State Department spokesperson Cy Ferenchak was quoted in the Brownsville Herald earlier this summer as saying that a birth certificate typically is "sufficient to prove citizenship" but that the department does not "have much faith in the document" because of the history of "fraudulently filed reports on the Southwest border." An Immigration and Naturalization Service list last updated in October 2002 identifies at least 65 midwives convicted of fraud since the 1960s for forging birth certificates. Government officials previously have said that cases in the 1990s revealed forgeries for about 15,000 Mexican-born people.

ACLU attorneys have said that the passport bans disproportionately affect poor and rural people who have less access to doctors. The use of midwives for deliveries is "an integral, though shirking" aspect of culture in South Texas, the Post reports. Spokespersons for the State Department and the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services, a successor agency of INS, declined to comment on the issue, citing the litigation (Hsu, Washington Post, 9/9).

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