Family claims U.S. midwife policies disrupted lives

January 03, 2010 10:20 PM
Jazmine Ulloa
The Brownsville Herald

BROWNSVILLE — The midwife home in Brownsville where Trinidad Muraira de Castro says she gave birth to her second daughter more than 25 years ago still stands on East Jackson Street. But, the midwife who delivered Yuliana no longer lives in it. Times have changed.

One August morning last year, Trinidad attempted to cross from Matamoros through a Brownsville port of entry with her two daughters, now in their twenties, and a newborn granddaughter, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Brownsville in September. But Yuliana’s birth certificate, registered by midwife Trinidad Saldivar, came into question.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer suspected the document to be false and for the next 11 hours, he held the women at the port of entry for intense interrogation, the Castros state in court records. The women say the officer harassed and threatened them with deportation or imprisonment to persuade them to sign papers confessing that their documents were fraudulent. They say they were not allowed to call anyone for help or speak to relatives who came to look for them.

“After a while, I realized I had no way out since he (the CBP officer) told me no matter what I did, to him, I was Mexican,” Yuliana, 25, writes in her statement.

Immigration attorneys are now seeking class-action status for the women’s lawsuit against CBP, saying the problem underwent by the Castros is systematic and a “window into the cases of dozens, if not hundreds, of similarly situated persons.”

CBP officers in the past have been accused of mistakenly detaining, deporting or denying entry to dozens of lawful U.S. citizens under what many have called a complicated and broken U.S. immigration system. But since the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative went into effect in June, those primarily targeted for long interrogations at ports of entry have been people with birth certificates issued by midwives, immigration attorneys said.

The travel security measure requires all U.S. citizens to present passport books, passport cards or other initiative-compliant documents when crossing into the country from Mexico through land borders.

But for years the U.S. Department of State had been arbitrarily rejecting hundreds of passport applications from people delivered by midwives, citing a history of forgeries for Mexican-born children in South Texas dating back to the 1960s, immigration attorneys said.

In a settlement agreement last year with the American Civil Libertities Union and immigration attorneys, the department agreed to implement new procedures and training for taking passport applications.

But many people have yet to receive their passports. To cross between Mexico and the United States, they must present their birth certificates, Texas identification cards and receipts for passport applications.

Yuliana writes in her statement that she showed these documents to the CBP officer at the Brownsville and Matamoros International Bridge but was still referred to secondary inspection with her family.

There, the situation became more complicated. Her mother had obtained falsified Mexican birth certificates for Yuliana and her sister, Laura Nancy Castro, 29, to enroll them in a Matamoros school when they were children, said Elisabeth Lisa Brodyaga, one of the lead attorneys in their case.

Out of intimidation and exhaustion from the officer’s questioning, Trinidad signed a “confession,” saying she had falsely registered her daughters as being born in the United States, according to court documents.

The women were denied entry into the country and sent back to Mexico. At the time of their crossing, Yuliana had been traveling with her newborn baby and Laura was pregnant, according to court filings. They lived in Brownsville with their spouses but had been staying temporarily with their mother in Matamoros.

A judge has since granted the sisters permission to re-enter the United States, but they can no longer visit their mother in Matamoros.

Their case demonstrates, immigration attorneys said, how the U.S.-Mexico border has become a different place for families like Trinidad’s, people who for years have made their lives along both sides of the Rio Grande.