The State Department is pushing back against a news report saying the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to deny passports to Hispanics who have U.S. citizenship but are suspected of possibly having fraudulent birth certificates.
In a statement to Fox News on Thursday, a State Department spokeswoman blasted the Washington Post over the story, saying passport denials in these cases are actually at a six-year low after peaking in 2015 during the Obama administration.
“The facts don’t back up the Washington Post’s reporting. This is an irresponsible attempt to create division and stoke fear among American citizens while attempting to inflame tensions over immigration,” said Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman. “Under the Trump Administration, domestic passport denials for so called ‘midwife cases’ are at a 6-year low. The reporting is a political cheap shot.”
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| Source: U.S. Department of State |
According the Post, both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations denied passports to people delivered by midwives in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The government has long believed fraudulent U.S. birth certificates have been given to babies along the border who were actually born in Mexico.
The newspaper reported the government, though, settled a case with the American Civil Liberties Union in 2009. The Post said that largely stopped the passport denials until the Trump administration took over.
The Washington Post in its story cited several examples of people who said they’re being wrongly targeted as the Trump administration challenges people they believe may have fraudulent birth certificates.
Read the rest of the story HERE.
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