DOJ’s Plans to Revoke Naturalizations Could Undo Hundreds of Convictions by David Gerger & Matt Hennessy
The Trump administration is seeking to denaturalize U.S, citizens. This analysis identifies a non-obvious, unintended wrinkle to those efforts.
Denaturalizations will rely on a provision of the law
"allowing revocation when the citizen is convicted after naturalization of a crime that started or occurred before naturalization.
Ironically, such a move could provide the legal predicate to invalidate the very convictions the government will use to seek denaturalization. As explained below, most criminal cases are settled by guilty pleas, not trials. Citizens who pled guilty to pre-naturalization crimes likely had no idea that doing so could lead to denaturalization. Unless they were warned of this risk — and in our experience they were not — their guilty pleas may now be subject to challenge as uninformed and involuntary, even after the fact."
