At least 858 immigrants from countries of national security concern or with high rates of immigration fraud, were mistakenly granted citizenship, according to a Department of Homeland Security review.
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The incredible discovery was made by the Department of Homeland Security’s office of inspector general, which released a report Monday on the incomplete fingerprint records and the mistakenly granted citizenships.
While USCIS protocol requires the adjudicator to check applicants’ fingerprints, in both DHS’ and the FBI’s digital repositories, neither of those databases had all the old fingerprint records for those candidates, the OIG report said.
As noted in the OIG report, DHS had already identified and prioritized for potential criminal prosecution approximately 120 naturalized citizens who appear to have committed fraud and avoided detection because their fingerprint records were not digitized at the time of their naturalization. But the immigrants beat the system by simply using another name or birth date to apply for citizenship. “858 immigrants from risky countires have slipped into our country and have been granted full citizenship despite pending deportation orders”, he said.
A fingerprint records gap was created because older paper records were never added to digital fingerprint databases in the 1990’s. The Inspector General determined that the agency granted citizenship to 858 individuals who had been ordered deported or removed under another identity but “their digital fingerprint records were not available” during the naturalization process.
“This failure represents a significant risk to America’s national security as these naturalised individuals have access to serve in positions of public trust and the ability to obtain security clearances”, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. Roth’s report cited at least three immigrants who were cleared for citizenship that managed to obtain aviation or transportation worker credentials, which allows them employment-based access to security-regulated areas of airports, maritime buildings and sea craft. In other cases, fingerprints taken by immigration officials during the deportation process weren’t forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Offices of the United States Attorneys accepted two cases but declined 26 others. A fourth person is now a law enforcement official, the audit said, without adding further information.
Those credentials have since been revoked.
ICE is investigating 32 other cases after closing 90 investigations.
ICE officials told auditors that the agency hadn’t pursued many of these cases in the past because federal prosecutors ‘generally did not accept immigration benefits fraud cases’.
Government agencies are working on implementing corrective action, which may include denaturalization.
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Those U.S. citizens may end up being de-naturalized, depending on a review recommended by the report.
