DOJ Describes Plan To Denaturalize Citizens on Scale That Has Never Been Tried

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The Trump administration wants to remove citizenship from large -scale naturalized Americans.

While a recent service note from the Ministry of Justice prioritizes national security cases, it orders the ministry to “continue to the maximum of denaturalization procedures in all cases authorized by law and supported by evidence” in 10 main categories of priority.

Denaturalization is different from expulsion, which eliminates the non-citizens of the country. With civil denaturalization, the government takes legal action to strip American citizenship of people after having become citizens, transforming them into non-citizens who can then be expelled.

The government can only do so in specific situations. He must prove citizenship “illegally provided” by not meeting the requirements, or that he lied or hidden important facts during the citizenship process.

The approach to the “maximum application” of the Trump administration means continuing any case where evidence could support prevailing citizenship, regardless of the level of priority or the force of evidence. As our previous research has documented it, this has already led to cases like that of Baljinder Singh, whose citizenship was revoked on the basis of a name difference which could easily have result from the error of a translator rather than intentional fraud.

A brief history

For most of American history, removing citizenship has been rare. But it increased spectacular during the 1940s and 1950s during the period of red fear characterized by an intense suspicion of communism. The US government has targeted people it thought they were communists or Nazi supporters. Between 1907 and 1967, more than 22,000 Americans lost their citizenship in this way.

Everything changed in 1967 when the Supreme Court decided Afroim v. Rusk. The court said that the government could not generally win citizenship without the person’s consent. He left only open cases involving fraud during the citizenship process.

After this decision, denaturalization has become extremely rare. From 1968 to 2013, less than 150 people lost their citizenship, mainly war criminals who had hidden their past.

How does the process work

In criminal proceedings, defendants obtain free lawyers if they cannot afford it. They obtain trials before jury. The government must prove the guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” – the highest level of evidence.

But in most cases of denaturation, the government files a civil action, where there is none of these protections.

People faced with denaturalization do not receive any free lawyer, which means that the bad accused are often confronted with the government alone. There is no trial before jury – just a judge deciding if someone deserves to remain American. The burden of evidence is lower – “clear and convincing evidence” instead of “beyond reason”. More importantly, there is no delay, so that the government can go back decades to build cases.

As law teachers studying citizenship, we believe that this system violates fundamental constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court has described citizenship a fundamental right. Chief judge Earl Warren in 1958 described it as the “right to have rights”.

In our reading of the law, by eliminating such a fundamental right through civil procedures which lack fundamental constitutional protection – no right to lawyer for those who cannot afford it, no trial with jury and a lower evidence – seems to violate the legal procedure required by the Constitution when the Government seeks to deprive a person of its rights.

The biggest problem is what citizenship screening for democracy does.

When the government can eliminate citizenship of naturalized Americans for a decades -old conduct through civil procedures with minimal regular procedure – pursuing cases on the basis of evidence that may not comply with criminal standards – this undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide. This creates a system where naturalized citizens are faced with a continuous vulnerability that can last their whole life, potentially frightened their full participation in American democracy.

The Memo of the Ministry of Justice establishes 10 categories of priorities for cases of denaturalization. They range from national security threats and war crimes to various forms of fraud, financial crimes and, above all, from any other cases that he considers “important enough to continue”. This “maximum application” approach means continuing not only clear fraud cases, but also in any case where evidence could support the prevailing citizenship, as weak or old the evidence.

This creates fear in immigrant communities.

About 20 million naturalized Americans must now fear that any error in their immigration documents for several decades can cost them citizenship.

A two -level system

This policy effectively creates two different types of American citizens. Americans of authoritarian origin have never to worry about losing their citizenship, whatever they do. But naturalized Americans face continuous vulnerability that can last their whole life.

It has already happened. A woman who became a naturalized citizen in 2007 helped her boss to documents that were then used in fraud. She cooperated with the FBI investigation, was characterized by prosecutors as only a “minimal participant”, completed her sentence and still faced the loss of his citizenship of decades later because she had not reported the crime at her request for citizenship – even if she had not been charged at the time.

The Directive of the Ministry of Justice to “continue” in 10 main categories – combined with the efforts of the first Trump administration to examine more than 700,000 naturalization files – represents an unprecedented expansion of denaturalization efforts.

Politics will be almost certainly faced with judicial disputes for constitutional reasons, but damage can already be caused. When naturalized citizens fear that their status may be revoked, this undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide.

The Supreme Court, in Afroyim c. Rusk, focused on the protection of existing citizens against the loss of their citizenship. The constitutional principle behind this decision – that citizenship is a fundamental right which cannot be arbitrarily removed by anyone in power – also applies to the way the government manages the cases of denaturalization today.

The Trump administration directive, combined with legal proceedings that lack fundamental constitutional protections, the risks creating a system that Afroim v. Rusk asked to prevent – one where, like the Supreme Court, temporarily said a group of citizens based on depriving another group of citizens of their citizenship. “”

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