To civil society organizations addressing immigrants’ rights, racial justice, civil
rights, privacy and data protection, and other relevant issues
Through litigation and advocacy, challenge efforts to diminish equal access to citizenship in
the United States, and ensure that any initiative to address fraud in the acquisition of U.S.
citizenship is based on compelling evidence and employs the least restrictive means.
Hold relevant authorities accountable for the responsible design and use of digital records
databases to protect privacy and prevent discriminatory targeting and surveillance.
Description of Research
The Open Society Justice Initiative conducted over 35 interviews with journalists, prosecutors,
federal defenders, judges, immigration attorneys, immigration practice experts, members of
civil society groups, stateless persons, individuals impacted by the policies described in the
report, and experts on citizenship and international law and practice. Photographs and
in-depth stories of some of the individuals affected by the policies described in this report are
also included within this text.
Extensive desk research was also undertaken, including a comprehensive review of thousands
of pages of primary denaturalization case documents, as well as consideration of official
government reports, press releases, budget requests, legislation and draft bills, case law,
treatises, academic materials and scholarly articles, investigative reports, and news articles.
To obtain comprehensive data on current denaturalization practice, the Justice Initiative
submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and gathered and analyzed primary
case materials from across the country.
FOIA requests were sent to three divisions within the Department of Justice (DOJ)—Civil,
Criminal, and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys—as well as to the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a component of the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS). Only the DOJ Civil Division provided a partial response at the time of writing.11
Relying on in-person case retrieval and Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), a
fee-based, electronic public access service that provides case and docket information online
from all federal courts, case searches were conducted across all U.S. districts to obtain all civil
and criminal denaturalization cases filed between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2018.
These searches returned a total of 168 cases, which represents the minimum number of cases
filed during this period.12
Executive Summary
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