Whittier, Alaska (AP) -Susus among the glaciers packed mountains and Alaskan Prince William Sound, the cruise ship stop Whittier is isolated enough to reach only one way, through a long one-lane tunnel, which the vehicles share by train. It is so small that almost all of its 260 inhabitants live in the same 14 -storey cooperative building.
However, Whittier is also unlikely to cross the two main American policy currents: the fight for what it means to be born in the US land and false claims by President Donald Trump and others and others that are not widespread voter fraud.
Alaskan prosecutors seek allegations of charges of 11 Whittier, most of them, saying that they were falsely demanding that US citizenship in registering or trying to vote.
All the accused were born in the American Samoa, a cluster of an island in the South of the Pacific, about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand. It is the only territory of the United States that is not automatically granted to citizenship because of the birth of American land because the Constitution dictates.
Instead, on the basis of a curse of the geopolitical history, they are considered “US citizens” – a difference that gives them certain rights and obligations, but by denying them others. American Samoyers are entitled to US passports and can serve in the military. Men must register for selective services. They can vote in the local elections of America Samoa, but cannot hold the state’s responsibilities in the US or take part in most US elections.
Those who want to become citizens can do it, but the process costs hundreds of dollars and can be difficult.
“For me, I’m an American. I was born to the American in the US land,” said firefighter Michael Pese, one of those accused of Whittier. “American Samoa was US soil, US jurisdiction, 125 years. According to the highest land law, it is my firstborn.”
The confusion for voting is not just a problem of Alaska
The status also caused confusion in other states.
In Oregon, officers accidentally registered to vote in nearly 200 American Samoan residents when they received their driving licenses in accordance with state motor votes laws. According to Oregon’s Secretary of State, 10 of them in the election elections. Officials there found that residents did not intend to violate laws and the crime had not been committed.
In Hawaii, one resident born in American Samoa, Sai Timoteo, 2018 He drove to the state laws publisher before he learned that he was not allowed to go to the state institution or to vote. She always considered her civic duty to vote, and the form of the voting material had one cell to check: “The US citizen/US citizen”.
“I checked that box all my life,” she said.
She also avoided the accusations and later Hawaii changed her shape to make it clearer.
Is US citizenship a firstborn?
The short storm of Trump’s reached executive orders in the first days of its second term was the one who sought to re -define the citizenship of Birthright by banning it illegally to the US parents who are in the US. Another, among other changes, requires voters to provide evidence of citizenship, restructure the federal elections.
The courts have blocked both orders so far. The Constitution says that “all persons born or naturalized in the US and in accordance with its jurisdiction are US citizens.” It also leaves election administration for states.
Whittier case began with Pese’s wife Tupe Smith. After the couple moved to Whittier in 2018, Smith started volunteering at the Whittier Community School, where nearly half of 55 students were American Samoan – many of them their nieces and nephews. It would help children with English, teach them to read and cook them Samoan dishes.
2023 There was a place at the Regional School Council and she drove for it. She was the only candidate and won with about 95% of the votes.
One morning after a few weeks, when she made her two children breakfast, the state squads came to knock. They asked about her voting story.
She explained that she knew she was not allowed to vote in the US presidential election, but thought she could vote in a local or state race. She said she checked the box confirming that she was a US citizen in the electoral staff’s order because it was not possible to identify herself as a US national, the court said.
The soldiers arrested her and took her to a women’s prison near anchor. She was released that day after her husband paid a deposit.
“When they put me in the cuffs, my son started crying,” Smith told The Associated Press. “He told their dad that he didn’t want the cops to take me or lock me.”
The question of intent
About 10 months later, the soldiers returned to Whittier and issued the court’s summons to Pese, eight other relatives and one man who was not related but originated from the same American Samoa village as Pese.
One of Smith’s lawyers, Neil Weare, grew up in another US territory, Guam, and is the founder of the Democracy Rights in Washington, whose mission is “encountered and dismantled an undemocratic colonial system governing US territories.”
He suggested that they would be prosecuted for “low hanging fruit” if there is no evidence that illegal immigrants often vote in the US elections. Even state -level studies found that non -cyclists voted as exclusively rarely.
“There is no doubt that Mrs. Smith had no intention to mislead or mislead a public official to unlawfully vote when she checked a” US citizen “on a voter’s registration material,” Alaska’s appeal court wrote to the Alaska Court of Appeal last week, after a lower court judge refused to dismiss the charges.
Prosecutors say that her false citizenship claim was intentional, and her statement on the contrary, the clear language of the voters’ application forms that she filled in 2020 and 2022.
A dispute entangled in a colonial past
The unique position of American Samoans arose until the 19th century, when the US and European countries sought to expand their colonial and economic interests in the South Pacific.
The US Navy secured the use of Pago Pago Port East Samo as a carbon and commercial ship receipt, while Germany sought to protect its coconut plantations in Western Samoa. Eventually the archipelago was divided when the Western Islands became an independent Samoa nation and the eastern nations that became the American Samoa, which is supervised by the Navy.
American Samoa leaders spent most of the late 19th century and early 20th century claiming that its people should be US citizens. Birth law citizenship was eventually granted to the inhabitants of other US territories – Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam and North Mariana Islands. Congress was considering the American Samoa in the 1960s, but refused. Some legislators mentioned their financial concerns during the Great Depression, while others expressed obvious racist contradictions, according to 2020. In the American Journal of Legal History.
Supporters of automatic citizenship say that it would be especially useful between 150,000 and 160,000 citizens living in states, many of which in California, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Alaska.
“We pay taxes, we do just like everyone else who are US citizens,” Smith said. “We would be happy to have the same rights as everyone here in the states.”
Legal issues on status to be reinstated
However, many American Samoa eventually found out the idea, fearing that the extension of the citizenship of birth would harm its customs, including the utility land laws of the territory.
The island’s inhabitants can be eliminated by the privatization of land, unlike what happened in Hawaii, Siniva Bennett, Samoa Pacific Development Corporation, Portland, Oregon -based non -profit organization chairman, said.
“We were able to keep our culture and we were not taken out of our country as many other local people in the US,” Bennett said.
2021 The 10th US District Appeal has refused to expand automatic citizenship for those born American Samoa, saying it would be wrong to force citizenship to those who do not want to. The Supreme Court refused to review the decision.
Several jurisdictions across the country, including San Francisco and Colombia County, allow people who are not citizens voting in certain local elections.
Tafilizaunoa tolefoa with Alaskan Pacific community said the situation was so confusing that its organization had appealed to Alaska’s electoral departments in 2021 and 2022. No time received a direct answer, she said.
“People told our community that they could vote as long as you have their voter registration card and released it by the state,” she said.
Finally, last year, Carol Beecher, Head of the State Electoral Unit, sent a letter from the toleaafoa Group saying that Americans Samoans have no right to vote in Alaska’s election. But then the forms of voting were signed.
“I hope this is a learned lesson that Alaska’s state agrees that it can be something we can administratively remedy,” said Toafoa. “I would say that the state could do it instead of prosecuted by community members.”
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Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska and Johnson from Seattle. Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Jennifer Sinto Kelleher Honolulu contributed to this report.