Everything you need to know about denaturalization in the United States: step by step and its most emblematic cases
Although rare, this process has specific causes and procedures that were codified more than 70 years ago, during Dwight Eisenhower's presidency.
U.S. Pasarpote/ Stefani Reynolds
What do Arnold Schwarzenegger, Henry Kissinger, and Elon Musk have in common? As it turns out, this diverse group shares one characteristic, and that is that its members are naturalized U.S. citizens. And while their stories show how far an immigrant can go after obtaining citizenship, there is a much lesser-known side to the system: denaturalization. Although it is a little-used legal tool, it allows citizenship to be annulled when it is shown to have been obtained improperly.
To begin with, it is essential to define what a naturalized citizen is: it is a person born outside the United States who obtains U.S. citizenship after meeting certain requirements.
So, what is denaturalization? It is the legal process by which the citizenship of a person who acquired citizenship by naturalization is revoked. This involves losing fundamental rights that one had as a U.S. citizen, such as the right to vote, legal protections and even a passport. Depending on the case, it even opens the door to deportation.
Although rare, this process has specific causes and procedures that were codified more than 70 years ago, during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.
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The denaturalization process
The legal authority for this process is found in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), enacted in 1952. Under this legislation, there are two different judicial paths:
- Civil route: occurs when the federal government files a civil suit against a naturalized citizen, alleging that his or her citizenship was granted illegally, either by concealment of facts or information or for other reasons. It can also be given for membership in prohibited organizations within 5 years of naturalization. According to the Supreme Court, and based on precedents such as Fedorenko v. United States and Kungys v. United States, to succeed, the Government must prove its case by clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence.
- Criminal route: in this scenario, denaturalization occurs when a person is ccriminally convicted for crimes committed during the naturalization process. It targets those who have obtained citizenship through fraud, deception, lying or concealment of information that was essential to the process.
In both cases, if the government obtains a favorable ruling, citizenship is revoked and the person in question reverts to his or her previous status, giving rise to possible deportation proceedings. The ruling can be appealed to federal appeals courts and eventually to the Supreme Court.
The agencies involved from the government are the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. Between lawsuit and sentencing, the process can take between one and three years.
Some landmark cases: Demjanjuk and Odeh
Over the years, two denaturalization cases stand out: those of John Demjanjuk and Rasmea Odeh.
John Demjanjuk was a Ukrainian immigrant who came to the United States in 1952 and was naturalized in 1958. He presented himself for decades as an autoworker from Ohio, a simple family man, and a war refugee.
However, during his immigration process, he decided to hide his past as a guard in at least three Nazi extermination camps: Sobibor, Majdanek, and Flossenbürg.
His story came to light in the 1970s, when a group of Holocaust survivors identified him (erroneously) as 'Ivan the Terrible,' one of the cruelest guards. The testimonies were so compelling that the Justice Department launched an investigation in 1977, which ended in a ruling that Demjanjuk had obtained citizenship by fraud. He was denaturalized.
In 1986 he was extradited to Israel, where he was initially sentenced to death, but the conviction was overturned after it was discovered that he was not actually Ivan the Terrible.
He therefore returned to the United States in 1993. Six years later, the DOJ initiated a new denaturalization process against Demjanjuk, which determined that, while he was not the famous torturer, he had worked as a guard in death camps. He was then deported to Germany, where he died in 2012.
The second well-known case is that of Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a Palestinian citizen who arrived in the United States in 1995 and became a naturalized citizen in 2004. She was a community activist in Chicago and worked for immigrant advocacy organizations.
During the questionnaire she completed to become a citizen, she checked the "No" option on a question about prior arrests, convictions, affiliations and terrorist activities.
However, she had been convicted in 1969 for an attack in Jerusalem, which claimed the lives of two Israeli students. She even had to serve ten years in prison before being released in a prisoner exchange.
Her alibi began to weaken after the DHS detected some inconsistencies with Israeli records. From there, the DOJ initiated a case for immigration fraud.
In 2017, Odeh admitted to withholding information that would have made her ineligible, so she agreed to renounce her citizenship, face deportation and pledge not to re-enter the United States.
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