President Trump’s DOJ, led by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is launching the largest effort in US history to ever denaturalize US citizens.
The effort would revoke the citizenship of 17, all of who are accused of immigration fraud by hiding criminal activity, some of it serious.
Here’s more from CBS News:
The Trump administration on Monday plans to announce it is seeking to revoke the citizenship of 17 U.S. citizens accused of immigration fraud, expanding its unprecedented denaturalization campaign, CBS News has exclusively learned.
Justice Department officials said the move represents the largest-ever effort by the U.S. government to use its denaturalization powers, which were rarely invoked before President Trump returned to the White House last year with promises to launch a historic deportation blitz. Between 1990 and 2017, the Justice Department filed an average of just 11 legal complaints per year seeking to denaturalize American citizens, historical figures indicate.
Some of the 17 citizens targeted in the latest denaturalization campaign were convicted of violent or serious crimes, including sex offenses against children. Others were convicted of fraud crimes or accused of committing immigration fraud.
In federal court complaints filed across the country in recent days, Justice Department officials argued that the individuals concealed their criminal activity when they applied for U.S. citizenship or were otherwise ineligible to be naturalized, including because they lacked a “good moral character,” one of the requirements in the naturalization process.
Those targeted in the latest round of denaturalization cases include a Haitian immigrant who allegedly sexually abused his daughter; a man from the former Yugoslavia convicted of sexually abusing a child under the age of 15; an immigrant from Mexico convicted of receiving sexually explicit images of minors; a former Catholic priest born in Colombia accused of child sex abuse; and a Filipino-born man who pleaded guilty to a child sex crime.
The group also includes an Indian immigrant accused of filing fraudulent H-1B visa petitions; the daughter of a Colombian drug trafficker accused of money laundering; a man born in Jamaica convicted of wire fraud; and a Cuban-born woman accused of defrauding a tribal casino. Other naturalized citizens were accused of using false identities.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department would have “zero tolerance” for abuse of the naturalization process.
Boom! Get ‘er done!