State Department Taking Passports Away from Yemeni-Americans

"Over the past year, dozens of Yemeni-Americans visiting their ancestral homeland have had their US passports summarily revoked or confiscated by the embassy in Sanaa without any clear legal basis, effectively stranding them outside the United States. Last month, a coalition of US civil rights groups submitted a report on this practice to the Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) pursuant to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. We asked Yaman Salahi and Nasrina Bargzie, staff attorneys at the National Security and Civil Rights Program at Asian Americans Advancing Justice: Asian Law Caucus who co-authored this report with eight other legal rights groups, to shed light on the issue." - MERIP, Aug. 9, 2014.

[See also: Passport Revocation As Proxy Denaturalization: Examining the Yemen Cases; and Citizenship, Passports, and the Legal Identity of Americans: Edward Snowden and Others Have a Case in the Courts.]