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Federal officials filed a total of 305 denaturalization cases between 1990 and 2017 — an average of 11 per year. Like the first, the second Trump administration appears keen to make those previous numbers look like child's play.
The Trump Justice Department announced on Monday that it filed denaturalization actions in a handful of federal courts against 17 individuals accused of various crimes including child sex abuse and fraud.
'American citizenship is a privilege, and it must be earned honestly.'
Those now facing the possibility of having their U.S. citizenship revoked hail from various nations including China, Colombia, Congo, Cuba, Haiti, India, Jamaica, and Somalia.
"When criminal aliens exploit the naturalization process by breaking the law, there are consequences," acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement obtained by Blaze News.
"Criminal aliens are lying about their past crimes, including drug dealers, sexual predators, and fraudsters," continued Blanche. "Gaining U.S. citizenship is a privilege, and under the steadfast leadership of President Trump, this Department of Justice maintains a zero-tolerance policy for the abuse of this process."
Among those targeted under this leg of the administration's denaturalization campaign is 50-year-old Neeraj Sharma, a native of India who ran a staffing company in New Jersey, where he filed 11fraudulent H-1B visa petitions with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Sharma, who became a U.S. citizen in late 2017, has been convicted of fraud and misuse of visas. The DOJ seeks to strip him of his citizenship for having allegedly "procured his naturalization by: (1) failing to disclose unlawful acts; (2) providing false testimony; and (3) concealment of a material fact and willful misrepresentation."
RELATED: The case for denaturalization
Joshua Lott/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Foreigners who manage to naturalize can have their citizenship revoked in civil proceedings under Section 1451(a) of Title 8 of the U.S. Code if a court finds that the certificate of naturalization and citizenship order were either "illegally procured or were procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation."
To establish that an individual illegally procured citizenship, the government must show that "the naturalized citizen must have misrepresented or concealed some fact, the misrepresentation or concealment must have been willful, the fact must have been material, and the naturalized citizen must have procured citizenship as a result of the misrepresentation or concealment," according to the U.S. Supreme Court.
There are other grounds for denaturalization, including affiliation with an organization that is opposed to organized government or favors totalitarian forms of government; conviction of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before Congress on alleged "subversive activities"; and dishonorable discharge from the military, if naturalization was conditional on service in the military, reported the Congressional Research Service.
Jamaican native Talman Harris is also facing possible denaturalization. Harris was found guilty in 2016 of wire fraud and conspiring to commit securities fraud and wire fraud and sentenced to prison the following year for his role in a penny-stock fraud scheme that resulted in a $39 million loss to investors. This scheme took place over an eight-year period, including during Harris' naturalization proceedings.
The DOJ alleges that during the period in which Harris was pursuing naturalization, "he was statutorily required to demonstrate good moral character, he committed a crime involving moral turpitude, committed unlawful acts that adversely reflected on his moral character, and falsely testified about his crime."
Armando Medoza, a 39-year-old originally from Mexico, might also be sent packing for claiming during his naturalization application and interview that he had never committed a crime or offense for which he hadn't been arrested when in fact he had been receiving sexually explicit images of children for years — a crime to which he pleaded guilty years later.
Another pair of depraved individuals on the DOJ's denaturalization list are Jean Claude Alfred, a 68-year-old Haitian native convicted in 1996 of sexually abusing his minor daughter at the same time that he was pursuing naturalization, and Tahir Lekaj, a 43-year-old from Yugoslavia who was convicted of sexually abusing a young child the year before he applied to naturalize.
Abdikadir Ali Kadiye's days as an American citizen may also be numbered. The Somali native admitted to a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent that he had used two identities for admission to the country, according to the DOJ. After he was unable to secure immigration benefits under one name, Kadiye tried again, this time with some success.
"American citizenship is a privilege, and it must be earned honestly. If you come here, break our laws, and lie in your immigration proceedings, you forfeit that privilege," said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "DHS will not stand idly by while Americans are harmed by criminals including sex offenders, perpetrators of fraud, and drug traffickers who have exploited our generosity and gamed our immigration system."
There have been signals in recent months that the Trump administration intends to file far more denaturalization actions in the coming months.
For instance, internal guidance reportedly issued to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices obtained by the New York Times in December asked that they "supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month" throughout the remainder of fiscal year 2026.
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