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"Public charge" law enters into force in the US 6:07
(CNN) - The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it will devote a section of its workforce to review cases of denaturalization, a measure that will probably worry immigrant advocates who have expressed their unease about this rule that strips Americans of citizenship.
The latest Department of Justice movement is in line with the administration's efforts to investigate cases in which people are believed to have obtained US citizenship illegally.
"When a terrorist or a sex offender becomes a US citizen with false pretenses, it is an affront to our system, and is especially offensive to those who are victims of these criminals," Deputy Attorney General Jody Hunt said in a statement. "The Denaturalization Section will promote the department's efforts to persecute those who illegally obtained citizenship status and ensure that they are responsible for their fraudulent conduct."
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While previous administrations have launched initiatives to investigate the circumstances under which an individual has obtained US citizenship, immigrant advocates have questioned the standards used by the Trump administration to investigate those cases.
Even so, denaturations are rare and can only occur in federal court. The Department of Justice has filed 228 civil denaturation cases since 2008, according to a Justice Department official. Of the 228 cases, 94 were approximately in the last three years, indicating a recent jump in this type of actions, the official said.
Historically, the United States has revoked citizenship for a variety of reasons, including lying about the date of arrival, age or marital status for political reasons, according to Patrick Weil, a professor at Yale Law School specializing in immigration and citizenship.
During World War II, for example, the United States reviewed the naturalization cases of American Germans who were pro-Nazis. "They were targeting people who worked for the Nazis, so they persecuted many American Germans," Weil said.
But, Weil said, it is increasingly difficult for the United States to strip someone of their citizenship, due to Supreme Court decisions that have reduced government power.
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A 2016 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that at least 858 people obtained U.S. citizenship despite being deported under a different identity, due to incomplete fingerprint records.
In previous years, DHS also found cases in which people received immigration benefits after changing their identities and hiding their deportation orders. The coordinated effort to identify these cases became known as Operation Janus.
In 2018, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, an immigration agency within the Department of Homeland Security, reported that it created an office to review the cases and then forward them to the Department of Justice, which can carry out civil denaturation. The new denaturation section of the Department of Justice seems to be an extension of that initiative.
Justice Department
