deferential” to executive decision-making.646 Actions will be set aside only where they are found to be “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law.”647 The federal court’s review under the APA is also limited to the record before the agency at the time of the decision.648 This means that if the agency record is “deficient, the court would not be empowered to issue a declaration that the person is a U.S. citizen. Instead, the case would be remanded to the agency.”649 The APA recourse alone does not result in judicial confirmation of U.S. citizenship, as noted above. It is in many respects an unsatisfactory remedy for individuals who are wrongly adjudicated as non-citizens. Individuals or groups aggrieved as a result of a wider agency pattern of practice regarding passport adjudications must combine separate causes of action to seek comprehensive relief.650 Hidden Gaps and Increasing Securitization in Birth Registration The experiences of Mexican-Americans in the Rio Grande Valley form the front lines of the administration of U.S. citizenship today, where presumptions of fraud give rise to a heightened scrutiny of citizenship documentation that is wholly unfamiliar to most Americans. The melding of fraud prevention with national security policy outlined in the previous sections has only intensified the means available for differentiated surveillance and presumptions of fraud aimed at particular groups. Birth certificates are often called “breeder documents” because they serve as proof of identity for acquiring other forms of documentation, including passports. The foundational document whose authenticity is most susceptible to investigation and invalidation today is the birth certificate. The situation of many citizens living in southern border towns thus also reveals a stark juxtaposition between a gentler and diffused birth registration regime that has systematically underserved particular groups, and a turbocharged, centralized, security-based passport regime that systematically scrutinizes the birth records of particular groups. The decentralized state. The U.S. birth registration system remains locally driven, with data sharing between local offices and the national vital statistics system (as illustrated on the next page).651 Vital records offices in 57 “vital event registration areas”—the 50 states, the District of Columbia, New York City, and five territories (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands)—collect vital event data, including on births and deaths.652 These offices are responsible for processing data that is gathered from physicians and attendants, and transferring that information to the National Center for Health Statistics, a federal body. For individuals, the registration of birth data is one step toward obtaining proof of birth and related demographic information required to serve as primary evidence of citizenship. Each state and local administration, operating with a significant degree of autonomy, will also have separate procedures and practices for obtaining birth certificates. III. Denial and revocation of documentation of U.S. citizenship 145