Immunities Clause and the Slaughter-House jurisprudence in the spirit of Afroyim.”675 At a minimum, the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship rights guarantees would place a currently missing constitutional limitation on government interference with access to passports. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the situation of Yemeni-Americans stranded overseas due to passport denials also conflicts with procedural protections already established: the invalidation of administrative denaturalization (Gorbach v. Reno, 2000) and an “absolute right” of U.S. citizens “to enter its borders” under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.676 These protections should serve as a first line of defense against denaturalization by proxy, but, as Weil also points out, the American citizens experiencing passport denials abroad would first need to find legal representation and bring their case to the courts.677 Denial of birth certificates by state authorities also triggers substantive rights and privileges including the right to be recognized as a person before the law and the obligation to act in the child’s best interest.678 Administered as a means of enforcing immigration law, denial of a birth certificate has the effect of punishing U.S. citizen children for the actions or presumed actions of their parents. In 1958, the Supreme Court in Trop v. Dulles categorically barred the use of denationalization as a punitive measure, writing: Citizenship is not a license that expires upon misbehaviour ... The deprivation of citizenship is not a weapon that the Government may use to express its displeasure at a citizen’s conduct, however reprehensible that conduct may be.679 Just as the Privileges or Immunities Clause can be read in the spirit of Afroyim to accord constitutional protections against passport stripping, especially in the case of children, access to proof of nationality at birth should be interpreted as absolute. Deprivation of Liberty without Due Process Passport denials most obviously impede the right to travel internationally. As the ruling in Kent v. Dulles noted, “The right to travel is a part of the ‘liberty’ of which the citizen cannot be deprived without the due process of law under the Fifth Amendment.”680 Citizens enjoy strong procedural due process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. However, the level of process due to non-citizens varies on a sliding scale depending on their admission and indicators of attachment to the United States. Legal permanent residents enjoy more due process protections under the Constitution than those accorded to them by Congress under its power to regulate immigration and naturalization.681 As discussed above, where the predicate question of citizenship is not directly addressed, then in passport denial or revocation actions, the level of process required under the 150 UNMAKING AMERICANS