What is the Denaturalization Task Force?
HISTORY AND PURPOSE
The Denaturalization Task Force was created in mid 2018 by United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) as the next chapter in a continued effort to remove citizens that were naturalized fraudulently under false identities. The Denaturalization Task Force is a team of investigators and lawyers whose job is to investigate and pursue denaturalization cases. This is a continuation of a government effort that has spanned over ten years and three presidents.
In 2008, Customs and Border Protection discovered that 206 people had become United States Citizens despite having been deported before. Having a past deportation order legally disqualifies a non-citizen from becoming a naturalized United States citizen. Customs and Border Protection found that people were being granted citizenship under false identities because the fingerprint records of those who had been deported had not been digitized, and as such, had not been found on any existing government database. This opening allowed people not to just assume false identities, but also pass a fingerprint scan by the United States government.
Due to this finding, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) then launched a task force to try to determine how many digital fingerprint records were missing from people who had been given deportation orders, barring them from citizenship. In 2011, DHS found that it was missing approximately 315,000 digital fingerprint records from people who had been ordered deported from the United States since 1990. About half of these fingerprint records were then digitized before the department ran out of money to finish the project, leaving some 150,000 fingerprint records yet to be digitized. This effort to digitize and upload fingerprints has now identified nearly 900 matches of people that had been awarded citizenship even though they had been deported before.
OPERATION JANUS & OPERATION SECOND LOOK
Operation Janus is a program that continues denaturalization efforts dating back to the George W. Bush administration back in 2008. In Operation Janus, the DHS has devoted more than $200 million to look for cases of citizenship fraud and green card fraud. It has specifically targeted people who are from “special interest” countries “that are of concern to the national security of the United States.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hired more than 300 new agents and staff to help further Operation Janus. Their jobs will be to search and investigate cases where they believe that someone committed fraud on the deportation system in order to gain citizenship or legal residency here in the United States. Only 305 denaturalization cases were pursued by the United States government between 1990-2017. This has increased significantly with the government projected to pursue 324 cases in 2019.
Operation Second Look is a program initiated by Homeland Security Investigations that looks into leads received from Operation Janus. Operation Second Look has increased staffing that would support the ability to examine over 700,000 files of naturalized citizens. Operation second look works as the investigative arm of Operation Janus to continue and expand the denaturalization initiative of this administration. Operation Janus and Operation Second Look together seek to ramp up the pressure and increase the cases pursued against naturalized citizens who are suspected to have committed fraud.
HOW DOES THIS AFFECT ME?
The Denaturalization Task force is a well-funded team of investigators and lawyers working towards a singular goal of stripping United States citizenship from naturalized citizens who they feel have committed fraud or were otherwise ineligible for citizenship. If you are a naturalized citizen, you are at risk of the federal government coming after your citizenship, simple as that. Even if you have not done anything wrong, you could be facing a denaturalization action because of the Denaturalization Task Force or other arm of the United States government. If you or someone you love is facing a denaturalization proceeding, you must act immediately to speak to an experienced denaturalization attorney.
