The Justice Department is launching a new push to strip criminal immigrants of their U.S. citizenship, saying they never would have been granted status in the first place if their crimes had been known at the time.
Officials announced a dozen denaturalization cases on Friday, targeting immigrants from across the globe.
They include a Catholic priest from Colombia who sexually abused a child, several men connected with al Qaeda and al-Shabaab, a gun trafficker, and a man from Cuba who became a U.S. ambassador even as he was spying for his native country.
To strip people of citizenship, the government must prove that they concealed their criminal activities or their real identities to the point that if they had been known, they wouldn’t have been granted citizenship in the first place.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche teased the new push in an interview with CBS on Wednesday, saying “a lot” of those who won citizenship should have been blocked.
“If you’re going to come and become a citizen in this country, but you’re going to do it by fraud, you’re going to do it in a way that’s illegal, you should be worried,” Mr. Blanche told the network.
From 1990 to 2017, the U.S. averaged fewer than a dozen cases filed per year, and they were among the worst of the worst, such as Nazis or those involved with war crimes in Bosnia or Chile.
The number of cases filed surged to 42 per year during the first Trump administration, then fell to 16 a year under President Biden, according to data compiled by professor Irina Manta at Hofstra University.
Friday’s new list contains some real doozies.
Victor Manuel Rocha, a Colombian native, acted as a spy for the intelligence service in Cuba as far back as 1973, even as he naturalized in 1978 and went on to serve as head of inter-American affairs at the National Security Council in the 1990s — where he had purview over Cuba — and later as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia under President George W. Bush.
Rocha, 75, is serving a 15-year sentence on his conviction and isn’t expected to be released for another decade, but Jason A. Reding Quinones, the U.S. attorney in southern Florida, says that’s not sufficient punishment.
“This civil denaturalization case is about finishing the job,” he said. “A person who secretly serves communist Cuba should not keep the privilege of United States citizenship, even while in prison.”
Khalid Ouazzani, a 48-year-old native of Morocco, was naturalized in 2006 and made the standard pledge of allegiance to the Constitution, even though authorities say he was already working with al Qaeda, including assisting in a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.
That, the government says, proves he lied about his attachment to the Constitution.
Baboucarr Mboob, 58, from The Gambia, took part in an extrajudicial execution of fellow military officers, which qualifies as a war crime. Authorities say he concealed that from the U.S. when he naturalized in 2011, but admitted it in testimony to the African country’s reconciliation commission.
Oscar Alberto Pelaez, 75, from Colombia, was a priest in California when he sexually abused multiple children from 1998 to 2000. The clergyman then lied to the U.S. during his naturalization process, telling the government in 1999 and 2001 that he had no unknown criminal behavior in his past.
The Justice Department said his concealment of his sexual abuse and his lack of “good moral character” would have disqualified him from citizenship had it been known at the time.
Adeyeye Ariyo Akambi, 65, from Nigeria, was deported from the U.S. in 2000 but managed to return under a different identity and worked his way to U.S. citizenship under that false name.
“The disturbing criminal histories confirm these individuals should have never received the privilege of U.S. citizenship,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the total number of cases filed, to clarify that Oscar Alberto Pelaez was serving as a priest in the U.S. and that Victor Manuel Rocha was a native of Colombia.
