‘Trapped' in Mexico

An 80-year-old Midland woman who is stranded in Mexico has filed a lawsuit against several government officials, claiming the Department of State refused to recognize her U.S. citizenship and wrongfully denied her an American passport.

Maria Celia Lopez has been "trapped" in Mexico for about a year and cannot return to her Midland home, where she lives with her son, according to the lawsuit.

"Her family is very concerned," Lopez’s attorney, Jeanne Morales of Midland, said last week. Morales could not say exactly where Lopez is living, but she said she is concerned about the increasingly violent conditions south of the border.

"She’s very, very scared," Morales said.

According to the suit, Lopez was born in suburban Los Angeles in 1929. She did not receive a birth certificate, however, until 1991, when a state district judge in El Paso declared her a citizen after hearing testimony and reviewing evidence, the suit states. Morales said Lopez was issued a delayed birth certificate later that year.

Lopez applied for a passport in 2007, according to the suit, but her application remained in limbo for several months. Morales said Lopez was given "the runaround" and that it was only with the help of Rep. Mike Conaway’s office that Lopez even learned her application had been denied.

"What’s particularly onerous about this case is she already did this," Morales said, alluding to the 1991 court ruling. "We didn’t really think we were going to have a problem getting a passport. Why do we have to jump through hoops when a court has already heard testimony and reviewed evidence? It’s ridiculous."

A spokeswoman for Conaway declined to comment last week. The Department of State had not responded to a request for comment by Friday afternoon; the government also has not filed an answer to the suit in federal court. Several attempts to contact Lopez’s family in Midland were unsuccessful.

Sometime around May or June 2009, Lopez traveled to Mexico "due to an illness" in the family, the suit said. By the time Lopez learned her application had been denied, stricter border regulations had gone into effect that require Americans to carry a passport, passport card or enhanced driver’s license to return to the United States.

Steve Spurgin, a Marfa attorney who specializes in immigration and border issues, said the government is often skeptical of delayed birth certificates because of the history of fraud among midwives along the border.

"They are taking a super hard line on enforcing existing immigration laws," Spurgin said. "The immigration authorities have been told to think of creative ways to deport people."

In some ways, Lopez is actually fortunate to have been denied in her application for a passport; now that the application has been adjudicated, she can seek judicial review in federal court.

Lisa Graybill, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said many people in situations comparable to Lopez’s — particularly people born to midwives — had been unable to sue the government to force it to issue a passport because their applications were placed in "the circular file" and left to collect dust. She said the Department of State often demanded "an unreasonable burden of proof" of citizenship from passport applicants.

But the ACLU last year settled a class-action lawsuit it filed against the government in which the State Department agreed to grant or deny passports based on a preponderance of the evidence as to their citizenship, regardless of whether the applicant was born to a midwife.

Morales said she is hopeful that Lopez will someday be reunited with her family in the Tall City.

"She can’t help the fact that a birth certificate was not issued to her (when she was born)," Morales said of Lopez. "She was an infant."