This Court has long recognized the plain fact that to deprive a person of his American citizenship is an extraordinarily severe penalty…Because denaturalization proceedings have not fallen within the technical classification of crimes is hardly a satisfactory reason for allowing denaturalization without proof while requiring proof to support a mere money fine or a short imprisonment…because of the grave consequences incident to denaturalization proceedings…it is our opinion that courts should not in [civil denaturalization] proceedings deprive a person of his citizenship until the Government first offers proof of its charges sufficient to satisfy the burden imposed on it, even in cases where the defendant has made default in appearance.438 While the court disapproved of default judgments in cases of denaturalization, the government has found a workaround that still strips citizens of their citizenship in absentia, while narrowly complying with the requirement that government must “first offer…proof of its charges.”439 Under Rule 12(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “[a] party may file a motion for judgment on the pleadings on the basis that no answer has been filed, or that the pleadings disclose that there are no material issues of fact to be resolved and that party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”440 Thus, by taking the extra step of filing a “Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings,” the government can still obtain a judgment, without the defendant being present or available to counter the claims made in the pleadings. The pleadings consist of the complaint initially filed against the defendant and its associated exhibits. It is unknown if citizens denaturalized in absentia even know that they have lost their citizenship. In other instances, the government has moved for and been granted summary judgment in cases where the defendant never appeared or did not answer the complaint against them. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, the court can “grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” A summary judgment is a judgment summarily entered by the court for one party and against the other, without a full trial. This happened in the widely publicized case of Baljinder Singh, an asylum seeker from India, in which the government celebrated its achievement in denaturalizing Singh, noting it as the first case to secure “[d]enaturalization as a result of Operation Janus.”441 According to the case docket, Singh was never involved in the case, nor appeared on his own behalf. It remains unclear if Singh even knew of the proceedings. Based on a single fingerprint as evidence, the government was granted its motion for summary judgment, swiftly denaturalizing Singh nearly three decades after he arrived in the U.S. The questionable reliance on fingerprints, particularly those collected in the early 1990s, is discussed further below. II. Denaturalization: A Radical Measure in the Hands of Zealots 99