INS Studying Revocation of Citizenship

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has not revoked the citizenship of any criminals improperly naturalized in Los Angeles this year because the agency is still trying to decide what procedures to use, according to Donald Neufeld, a Los Angeles-based INS official.

Although INS officials insisted that all criminals who were naturalized improperly will have their citizenship revoked, they acknowledged that “denaturalization” is a complex, time-consuming legal process that until now has been reserved primarily for egregious cases and notorious wrongdoers, such as Nazi war criminals.

The INS has been thrust into the role of deciding whether to withdraw U.S. citizenship from some new Americans because the agency, under a program known as Citizenship USA, mistakenly permitted them to become citizens before a review of their law enforcement records revealed a criminal history that should have disqualified them. U.S. law bars immigrants who have committed serious felonies from citizenship.

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Although the exact number of criminals naturalized is not known, Neufeld, who heads Citizenship USA in Los Angeles, said that his staff recently identified 15 who were granted citizenship improperly in Los Angeles this year.

In addition, he said, the Los Angeles office is reviewing another 123 possible cases in which past crimes should have disqualified new citizens from naturalization. These suspected criminals were among 143,000 immigrants granted citizenship in Los Angeles since last March, he said.

But Neufeld added that his staff has not yet taken action to reverse these mistakes because INS headquarters here is still drafting regulations for denaturalizations. He said that his office cannot revoke the citizenship of any of those found to be criminals unless regulations are adopted.

The criminals became citizens by mistake, according to the INS, because the FBI failed to complete routine background checks before they were sworn in under the expedited naturalization procedures that are a part of the Citizenship USA program, which ends Monday. In Los Angeles, an estimated 326,800 people will have been naturalized under the program, which began in August 1995, INS officials said.

Not all immigrants with criminal records are ineligible for citizenship. According to the INS, many recent applicants have records of immigration law violations that do not disqualify them.

The inability of INS officials to move quickly to strip citizenship from criminals is likely to anger members of Congress, who have been demanding immediate action. Even supporters of Citizenship USA, such as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), herself a naturalized citizen, have been highly critical of the agency for mistakenly granting citizenship to criminals.

“I’m totally against any criminal becoming an American citizen,” Ros-Lehtinen declared during a congressional hearing earlier this week. “It cheapens my naturalization to have a scumbag become an American citizen.”

Maris Stella Jarina, a special assistant in the INS field operations office in Washington, predicted that it will take the agency another two months to finish work on the new regulations.

At present, Jarina said, the only way for the INS to revoke the citizenship of newly naturalized criminals is to take their cases to federal court, where government attorneys are required to prove that the immigrants in question intentionally concealed criminal records that would have disqualified them.

Jarina said that 1990 amendments to the immigration law permit the government to administratively revoke citizenship improperly conferred if it acts within a year of naturalization. But until regulations for this law become final, she said, the government still must seek redress through the courts.

While INS officials in Los Angeles await final adoption of the regulations, Jarina said, they will investigate the cases in question.

Under the proposed regulations, newly naturalized citizens who are accused of concealing their criminal records will be given 30 days to respond to the charges.

Perhaps the most famous person whose citizenship was revoked through the time-consuming process of litigating in the courts in recent years was John Demjanjuk, who was found to have concealed his past as a Nazi death camp guard.

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According to an INS spokesman, the government denaturalized 15 people in fiscal 1994 and 11 people in fiscal 1995, and has stripped only two of citizenship during the current fiscal year.

Convicted murderers are not eligible for citizenship, according to INS officials. Citizenship can be conferred on those convicted of theft, fraud, aggravated assault and prostitution, but only if the offenses are more than five years old.

Of the 138 new citizens currently under scrutiny in Los Angeles for alleged criminal backgrounds, according to Neufeld, there are no convicted murderers. He said that most of the 138 were convicted of assault, drug trafficking or firearms violations.