• The government defends cases differently and more aggressively, going to trial in the face of convincing evidence that the plaintiff was born in the United States and ultimately losing after a lengthy and expensive trial.577 • Denial of passport renewal and passport revocations often happen following a request for benefits, most often visa applications for family members. • Individuals are not notified that their passport has been revoked. In passport applications still in the administrative process, the State Department’s requests for additional information to prove birth in the U.S. have grown increasingly burdensome and applications can take years to process as a result, delaying access to free movement and work and often causing long-term separation from family members.578 Examining the outcomes of passport revocation cases filed in the Southern District of Texas revealed a 14.3% increase in trials starting in 2017, with approximately 33% of post-January 1, 2017 cases still pending as of May 2019 (23 out of 69 cases). The number of joint dismissals has almost tripled, with an increase of approximately 233% over pre-2017 cases (from 6 to 20 cases). This finding is consistent with reports that it is increasingly difficult to resolve cases at the administrative level. Many Americans think of a passport as a travel document tucked away in a drawer until needed for a vacation or business trip.579 By far the most prevalent de facto identity credential in the United States is a driver’s license.580 But for communities living in South Texas and other parts of the southern border, the passport is essential for everyday life: livelihoods, economies, education, healthcare, and families naturally span the border and have for generations.581 The passport is, uniquely to this area, the engine of local economies on both sides of the border. Passport denials and revocations do not just disrupt individual lives, the practice tears at the fabric of local culture developed over the course of decades. As one report noted: Historically, all a native-born Texan needed to be able to live and work in the U.S., and cross freely back and forth from Mexico, was a baptismal certificate showing birth in Texas and baptism at a very early age. Texas birth certificates, even those showing birth with a midwife or filed years after the birth, also usually sufficed to obtain U.S. passports, to immigrate close relatives, and to transmit citizenship to the children of persons holding such certificates, even if the births had also been incorrectly registered in Mexico.582 The introduction of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) in 2009 made passports essentially mandatory to cross the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and “obtaining a passport simultaneously became a high priority, and many times more difficult” for those in South Texas.583 Shortly after WHTI took effect, a lawsuit challenged the State Department’s 126 UNMAKING AMERICANS