Green card holders who have become American citizens are facing the risk of losing their US citizenship. The US Department of Justice has set a top priority for the revocation of US citizenship and prioritizing denaturalization, as outlined in a recently issued memorandum to enforcement authorities.
The extraordinary step of stripping naturalized Americans of their citizenship used to be reserved for individuals who turned out to be war criminals, genocide perpetrators, threats to national security, violent felons or, during the Cold War, communists.
But under President Donald Trump’s administration, something as mundane as under-reporting income on a tax return could mean you are no longer a US citizen.
Last month, in an extension of Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Justice Department made denaturalization one of five enforcement priorities for the agency’s Civil Division. The unit will now look at individuals in any of 10 priority areas, along with the catch-all of “any other cases” the agency determines “sufficiently important to pursue.”
[…] In April, before the new DOJ guidelines came out, Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a web portal to track criminal proceedings against naturalized citizens they say hid crimes that would have barred them from obtaining citizenship.
It lists nine people who were convicted of child sexual abuse, a sex trafficker, a war criminal, and a Nigerian man who took part in an $80 million international scam. All lost their bids to gain citizenship or were retroactively denaturalized.
It didn’t list Vanessa Ben.
In March, more than five years after the Houston grandmother pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return, prosecutors asked a court to strip her of her citizenship.
Ben, who worked as an accountant, had gone through a years-long process to obtain citizenship, culminating in a series of interviews with immigration officials in 2017 and 2018 where she was grilled to determine whether she met the standard of being of “good moral character.”
Like the nearly 8 million other people naturalized in the past decade, Ben was asked broad questions, including whether she had ever committed a crime, even one she was never charged with. According to court documents, she answered “no,” and was granted citizenship soon after.
Then, in 2019, Ben was charged with tax fraud. She pleaded guilty to filing a fraudulent tax return before she became a citizen; she had underreported income and ended up with a $7,712 refund. She agreed to pay the IRS a fine, and was sentenced to 12 months in prison.
DOJ is now seeking to strip her of citizenship for allegedly covering up that she had filed a false tax return, even though at the time she hadn’t been charged with that crime. Ben’s federal public defender and her family declined to comment, citing her upcoming trial in Houston.
Determining why denaturalization cases are pursued can be difficult because many cases are filed under seal in court. But pursuing cases over relatively minor tax fraud and other lesser, non-violent crimes is exceptionally rare, said former officials and attorneys who have defended clients in denaturalization cases.
DOJ spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre maintained that denaturalization “will only be pursued as permitted by law and supported by evidence against individuals who illegally procured or misrepresented facts in the naturalization process.”
“This Department of Justice is committed to maintaining the integrity of the naturalization program,” she said in a statement. “Those who gain citizenship through unlawful means and endanger our national security will not maintain the benefits of being an American citizen.”
Groups like the Immigrant Defense Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have told attorneys to take note of their clients’ citizenship status, as well as when they acquired citizenship, before considering how to plead to new charges that could open them up to denaturalization.
Corrales, the attorney and former prosecutor, said clients are worried that things as simple as a traffic ticket could upend their lives in the US.
“The most important advice I can offer your readers, whether naturalized citizens or any other immigrant status, is to seek the advice of an experienced immigration attorney before pleading to any charges,” said Gintare Grigaite, an attorney who has successfully defended such denaturalization cases in the past.
Legal Standards
Citizens can be denaturalized in a civil case under 8 USC 1451, which deals with “concealment” or “willful misrepresentation” of a “material fact” that would have otherwise precluded someone from becoming a citizen. This law also allows for stripping someone of citizenship if, within five years of being naturalized, they become affiliated with a terrorist group.
Officials can also use 18 USC 1425, which makes it a criminal offense to acquire or attempt to acquire citizenship by lying about a material fact. Individuals must be charged within 10 years of filing the form or attending the interview where they lied about one of these material facts. They get a jury trial, in which the government must prove its case “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Civil denaturalization, which DOJ prosecutors were directed to expand, has no statute of limitations and doesn’t involve a jury trial. Defendants don’t have the right to an attorney and the government’s standard of proof is slightly lower than that in a criminal case– “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt.”
In some cases, the children or spouses of someone who loses their citizenship can also be denaturalized. Individuals who naturalized because they served in the US military can also lose their citizenship if they are found to be violating these provisions within five years after they became citizens.
“We have used denaturalization very sparingly over the years, largely in cases of war criminals,” said Blas Nuñez-Neto, a top border adviser under Biden. “Any kind of concerted push to strip people of their citizenship at scale would really be ahistorical, and concerning.”