Mexicans with U.S.-born children chose a straightforward solution: re-registering their children’s births in Mexico. This phenomenon is widely known in the region.598 Since the turn of this century, growing intolerance of once-accepted coping practices like double-registration has hit border families the hardest, while centralized state administrators notch victories in what they consider an existential struggle to root out fraud. Such “wins” threaten to undermine international norms (examined in Chapter I, History and Context) meant to protect individuals from arbitrary denationalization. Applications for benefits trigger scrutiny. As was the case in the context of Yemeni-American passport seizures, interviews conducted in the Rio Grande Valley in early 2019 confirmed that requests for benefits trigger passport fraud investigations, particularly when passport applicants had pending I-130 petitions (petitions for immigration visas on behalf of non-citizen family members). As one lawyer for passport applicants has put it: A [person], who was born with a midwife … applied to be a U.S. soldier and there was no problem [joining the military]. And the moment he wants to get a benefit, meaning he wants to get a passport or he wants to petition for his mom or his wife, they’re like “wait a second, we don’t know if you were born here.” So we have a government that for you to die for is fine, but not when you’re trying to ask something from them. 599 Interrogation and endless vetting. As described above, State Department officials administering passport applications and revocations have wide discretion to ask for (and reject) additional evidence of U.S. citizenship. Triggers like double registration in the U.S. and Mexico and a record of birth from a midwife on the SBA List can lead not only to extensive vetting, but also to interrogation, harsh treatment, and extended periods of immigration detention. Even after citizenship is litigated and sorted, the stigma of a faulty removal order during this ordeal can linger long afterwards because it can take years to set the administrative record straight. Resource drain. In the four counties of the Rio Grande Valley, per capita income in 2012 was between $10,800 and $13,695.600 For individuals who since the introduction of WHTI need to litigate their passport cases to maintain their way of life, the effort presents a massive expense. For the government, too, investigating and litigating passport cases requires significant resources, especially in light of the reported trend to take more and more cases to trial, most often in a losing battle despite favorable procedural odds and vastly superior financial means. III. Denial and revocation of documentation of U.S. citizenship 129