As you may have heard, some American citizens of Hispanic ethnicity living in the Texas borderlands along the Rio Grande valley are having their passports revoked as they cross the border because ICE officials claim that their Texas birth certificates are invalid.
American citizenship is being effectively revoked by these ICE officials, who have apparently decided that an official certificate of live birth in Texas is not valid if it was filled out by a midwife.
Please note that this is happening even when the official birth certificate has previously been accepted by other government officials, who have certified other official documents—both passports and driver’s licenses—that are based on it.
Many people affected by this are essentially becoming stateless. If they have no valid citizenship here, they do not have it anywhere. It is an untenable situation.
I am sure that this issue in Texas will be fought through the legal system, and I certainly hope that full citizenship can ultimately be restored to those affected.
However, I suspect that before a final legal decision can be reached, the mid-term elections will be upon us. And some of the voters in the Texas borderlands will be unable to participate in these elections because they will have effectively had their citizenship revoked, at least temporarily.
I should note that one of the most popular Democratic candidates in Texas is Beto O’Rourke, who is a candidate for the U.S. Senate, trying to unseat Ted Cruz. Beto is not of Hispanic ethnicity, but he is a native of El Paso, right on the border next to the Rio Grande. He’s been working very hard to get a new, wider base of Democratic voters fired up, including a lot of Hispanics from the borderlands. If these voters turn out for Beto, they will turn out for Democrats in other places on the ballot.
Do the recent actions of ICE in Texas have anything to anything to do with the coming elections?
Are they aimed at lowering voter turnout for Democrats?
Because, intentional or not, that will probably be the result.
