[dropcap]T[\/dropcap]he United States has formed a task force whose sole aim is to identify people who \u201clied\u201d on their citizenship application and denaturalize them, <\/span>putting more than 20 million naturalized citizens at risk.<\/span><\/a> USCIS, realizing it failed to review and digitize paper fingerprint submissions, is attempting to remedy its own mistake by now revoking citizenship of naturalized individuals they claim shouldn\u2019t have been naturalized in the first place. This effort, combined with other extreme anti-immigrant policies, has showcased that these efforts are not to \u201c<\/span>correct bureaucratic mistakes<\/span><\/a>,\u201d but instead are processes that are instituted by Donald Trump to \u201ctake back [the] country\u201d for the <\/span>\u201cwhite majority\u201d<\/span><\/a> by <\/span>purging as many immigrants as possible. <\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The efforts to identify \u201cfraudulently\u201d naturalized citizens was first promulgated under the Obama-era program dubbed \u201c<\/span>Operation Janus<\/span><\/a>.\u201d The initiative found about 315,000 cases where fingerprint information, usually collected at the biometric stage of processing, was either missing or partially completed in the United States digital fingerprint repository. These cases, according to the immigration agencies, were not uploaded to the new digital fingerprinting system and therefore not cross-checked with FBI and criminal records. These mistakes do not all indicate an intent to defraud the immigration authorities but instead stem from poor oversight in transferring physically collected fingerprints to the digital fingerprint database. <\/span><\/p>\n

Dan Kesselbrenner, executive director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild told Rewire News<\/a>, \u201cIt is a crime to obtain naturalization in fraudulent ways \u2026. But you can also be denaturalized if there was a mistake made by USCIS that had nothing to do with your or if you made a mistake by omitting something in your application you didn\u2019t realize you had to include.\u201d \u00a0Individuals who successfully navigated the costly, stressful and complicated immigration system are now at risk of being denaturalized because the immigration system failed to properly check applicants\u2019 forms and not necessarily because they intended to defraud the immigration system.<\/p>\n

Denaturalization Task Force Orders<\/b><\/h3>\n

[dropcap]U[\/dropcap]nder current orders, the task force is reviewing cases first from <\/span>\u201cSpecial Interest\u201d countries or countries that border \u201cSpecial Interest\u201d countries<\/span><\/a>; unsurprisingly, these countries have been majority Muslim countries. These identified cases are then passed from the Department of Homeland Security to Homeland Security Investigations, where they further investigate the cases originally identified by Department of Homeland Security. This secondary process, known as \u201cOperation Second Look,\u201d seeks to <\/span>examine 700,000<\/span><\/a> remaining files above and beyond the 315,000 identified by Operation Janus to see if those citizens should be denaturalized.<\/span><\/p>\n

Operation Second Look seeks funding to hire new agents to review these 700,000 additional files. In a system that is already fraught with delays and budget constraints, the Department of Homeland security seek to siphon $207.6 million dollars from the Immigration Examinations Fee Account, which is funded by the fees that individuals seeking adjudication and naturalization pay to have their cases considered. In effect, DHS is using the money paid by naturalized citizens to denaturalize them. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nCurrent Denaturalization Cases<\/b><\/h3>\n

[dropcap]I[\/dropcap]n the past several months, unprecedented deportation attempts on non-violent, actively engaged citizens and residents have occurred, including the recent attempt to denaturalize a <\/span>Florida grandmother<\/span><\/a> and the deportation of a <\/span>Michigan-area doctor<\/span><\/a> specializing in internal medicine. <\/span><\/p>\n

As of July 2018, four denaturalization cases falling under Operation Janus have been identified: <\/span>Humayun Kabir Rahman<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Baljinder Singh<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Parvez Manzoor Khan<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Rashid Mahmood<\/span><\/a>. All four individuals were previously naturalized \u00a0and most were naturalized for well over a decade. Striking similarities exist between the individuals, all of them being between 40-60 years old and having been <\/span>naturalized during the summers of 2005 and 2006.<\/span><\/a> All failed to appear at immigration hearings and all married U.S. citizens. <\/span><\/p>\n

Baljinder Singh, the first individual denaturalized under Operation Janus, arrived in the <\/span>United States over 25 years ago<\/span><\/a> and has been peacefully residing in Carteret, New Jersey. The Acting Assistant Attorney General Chad Readler of the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Division stated \u201cthe defendant exploited our immigration system and unlawfully secured the ultimate benefit of naturalization, which undermines both the nation\u2019s security and our lawful immigration system.\u201d On January 5, 2018, Judge Stanley R. Chesler of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ordered Singh\u2019s citizenship revoked. Now, Singh remains deportable at the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s discretion. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Citizenship and Equality<\/b><\/h3>\n

[dropcap]I[\/dropcap]n 2017, the Supreme Court stated that American <\/span>citizenship cannot be revoked<\/span><\/a> over trivial misstatements. Misstatements must be material to justify revoking citizenship and is done \u00a0sparingly <\/span>with about seven suits brought per year since 1990<\/span><\/a>. However, as the Trump Administration increasingly belies well-established understandings of human and civil rights, the right to rely on citizenship status is quickly diminishing. Concerns over citizenship status have skyrocketed, as naturalized citizens realize that they may have to fight potential unintentional misstatements in federal court. While legal standards are in place to protect against trivial misstatements impacting citizenship, the United States has seen unprecedented upheaval of immigration law, showcasing that these standards cannot necessarily be relied on. <\/span><\/p>\n

As it stands, the Department of Justice has the authority to file denaturalization lawsuits against naturalized citizens under two circumstances: if the individual did not legally meet the requirements of citizenship, or if they lied about or concealed something material during the citizenship process. If the government prevails in the lawsuit, the individual is reverted to a \u201cgreen card holder,\u201d or <\/span>lawful permanent resident who can be stripped of their legal status and deported without a court hearing.<\/span><\/a> For individuals that are refugees or stateless, this denunciation of citizenship can be fatal. <\/span>\u201cA stateless person is not just expelled from one country, native or adopted, bur from all countries \u2013 none being obliged to receive and naturalize him \u2013 which means he is actually expelled from humanity.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The distinction between natural-born and naturalized citizens is one that, according to the doctrine of <\/span>equal protection<\/span><\/a> and citizenship, shouldn\u2019t exist. Citizenship, regardless how acquired, is still citizenship and carries the same rights and responsibilities whether the individual is natural-born or naturalized. \u201cUnder this administration, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a stretch to think they don\u2019t really view naturalized immigrants as American citizens,\u201d Kesselbrenner said. By distinguishing between the two groups of citizens, the government fails to recognize citizenship as, once acquired, <\/span>inalienable, <\/span>necessarily classifying one as \u201cmore American\u201d that the other. <\/span><\/p>\n

Over 20 million Americans are naturalized citizens. Over 12 million individuals are green card holders. For those going through the naturalization process, the task force represents uncertainty and impermanence of their potential new citizenship; fees paid by those seeking to be naturalized may very well be the funding for their future denaturalization case. For those already naturalized, the task force continuously declares that their citizenship is less than those of natural-born US citizens. <\/span>Schneider v . Rusk <\/span><\/i>(1964) explicitly stated that it is \u201cimpermissible\u201d to assume \u201cthat naturalized citizens as a class are less reliable and bear less allegiance to this country than do the native born.\u201d The United States, by deeming naturalized citizenship as less than natural-born citizenship, is imputing its war against immigration on United States citizens.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you know of anyone impacted by the Denaturalization Taskforce, please contact us at editors@staging.lawatthemargins.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[dropcap]T[\/dropcap]he United States has formed a task force whose sole aim is to identify people who \u201clied\u201d on their citizenship application and denaturalize them, putting more than 20 million naturalized citizens at risk. USCIS, realizing it failed to review and digitize paper fingerprint submissions, is attempting to remedy its own mistake by now revoking citizenship […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":4346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,4,6],"tags":[103,30,104],"class_list":["post-4337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-labor-and-immigration","category-law-and-social-movements","tag-denaturalization","tag-immigration","tag-taskforce"],"yoast_head":"\n