For the next time Donald Trump tries to convince you he supports legal immigration: The AP reports the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—under the leadership of anti-immigrant director Lee Francis Cissna—is launching an effort to search out immigrants they believe cheated in their naturalization process and then strip them of their U.S. citizenship.
It’s a process so rare—and extreme—that “most U.S. efforts to strip immigrants of their citizenship focused largely on suspected war criminals who lied on their immigration paperwork, most notably former Nazis.” NAZIS. But these days they’re apparently “very fine people” while immigrants just trying to support their families are the “animals.” And cheaters, apparently.
It shouldn’t be a surprise Cissna is leading this. USCIS has historically been paper-pushing agency whose tasks involve processing citizenship applications, but under his tenure, the agency has gone Trumpian, with Cissna—a man with ties to anti-immigrant groups—stripping“a nation of immigrants” from the agency’s mission statement. And we’re supposed to believe Cissna’s efforts are in good faith. Right.
According to Cissna, he suspects USCIS will target “potentially a few thousand cases,” with the AP reporting that “in some cases, government attorneys could bring criminal charges related to fraud.” Of course, what all this means is making more immigrants deportable. And when the federal government has a record of “accidentally” targeting people who shouldn’t be deported, there’s plenty of reason to be nervous about this.
One last question, though: will this effort include people who may have worked illegally prior to gaining their citizenship?