During an April 11th interview on Fox Business, Congressman Austin Scott (R-Ga) asserted those who chant “Death to America” and other treasonous gestures should be deported – “but not U.S. citizens.”
Not only can the government deport U.S. citizens, it has on many occasions.
John Demjanjuk was born in Ukraine and was conscripted into the Soviet Red army in 1940. He was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942, trained at Trawniki concentration camp and served as a prison guard at Sobibor. After the war emigrated to the U.S. and became a U.S. citizen in 1958. In 1977, Demjanjuk was accused by camp survivors of being “Ivan the Terrible” from Treblinka. He was extradited to Israel, convicted and sentenced to death. He maintained his innocence and the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction. He returned to Ohio in 1993. In 1999, U.S. prosecutors again sought to deport him for having been a concentration camp guard and his citizenship was revoked in 2002. In 2009, he was deported to Germany, charged with 27,900 counts of an accessory to murder. In 2011, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. (Wikipedia)
Friedrich Karl Berger came to the U.S. in 1959. In 2021, the 95-year old was deported to Germany after an index card found on a sunken ship helped prove he participated in Nazi persecutions as a guard at concentration camps. (Washington Post article by Devlin Barrett dated February 20, 2021)
Berger was prosecuted by the Department of Justice’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, “We are committed to ensuring the United States will not serve as a safe haven for human rights violators and war criminals. We will never cease to pursue those who persecute others.”
Since 2003, ICE obtained deportation orders against and physically removed 1,064 known or suspected human rights violators from the United States. Currently, HSI has more than 155 active investigations and is pursuing more than 1,675 leads and removal cases. Since 2003, the HRVWCC has issued more than 77,000 lookouts for individuals from more than 110 countries.
(Wikipedia: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, February 20, 2021, ICE removes WWII Nazi concentration camp guard to Germany)
What Congressman Austin Scott (R-Ga) – and most Americans – are unaware of is the legal difference between natural born and naturalized U.S. citizens.
Naturalized U.S. citizens can have their citizenship revoked and be deported under Federal law for engaging in certain conduct. The process is called “Denaturalization.”
Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, 70, a Jordanian national, was recently stripped of her 22-year long U.S. citizenship and deported from the United States in August 2017 for participating in a deadly terrorist bombing following a federal immigration fraud conviction.
“Removing individuals who pose a threat to national security remains ICE’s highest enforcement priority,” said Rebecca Adducci, field office director for ERO Detroit. (Wikipedia: ICE: September 21, 2017)
“The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, accounting for about 20% of the world’s immigrants. The U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018. Since 1965, when U.S. immigration law replaced a national quota system [thanks to Ted Kennedy and the Democrats], the number of immigrants living in the U.S. has more than quadrupled. Unauthorized [aliens] are almost a quarter of the U.S. foreign born population. [Since the Democrats changed “broken” immigration law], the illegal alien population more than tripled in size from 3.5 million to a record high of 12.2 million in 2007. There were 10.5 million [illegal aliens] in the U.S. in 2017, accounting for 3.2% of the U.S. population.
About 27% of aliens are permanent residents and 5% are temporary residents. More than 1 million immigrants arrive in the U.S. each year. (Pew Research Center, August 20, 2020, “Key findings about U.S. immigrants”)
The bottom line is Naturalized U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents can be deported under these conditions:
1. Concealment of Material Fact or Willful Misrepresentation: includes omissions as well as affirmative misrepresentation.
2. Membership or Affiliation with Certain Organizations: if the alien becomes a member of, or is affiliated with, the Communist party, other totalitarian party, or terrorist organization within five years of his/her naturalization. A person involved with such organization cannot establish the naturalization requirements of having an attachment to the Constitution and of being well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.
The fact that a person becomes involved with such an organization within five years after the date of naturalization is prima facie evidence that he or she concealed or willfully misrepresented material evidence that would have prevented the person’s naturalization.”
3. Other than Honorable Discharge before Five Years of Honorable Service after Naturalization.
(Wikipedia: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Policy Manual Chapter 2: Grounds for Revocation of Naturalization)
During the Clinton-Gore citizenship drive “Citizenship 500K”, the administration pressured immigration adjudication officers to forego the oral interview and greatly abbreviated background investigations on aliens applying for citizenship. Within two years it was discovered that over 1,500 criminal aliens had been granted U.S. citizenship erroneously. Some were denaturalized but not many could be found to prosecute. (personal knowledge as an immigration inspector)
Just as involvement in certain organizations is prima facie evidence that he or she concealed or willfully misrepresented material evidence that would have prevented the person’s naturalization, it doesn’t take a large legal leap to conclude that uttering “Death to America!” is also prima facie evidence of such involvement but also violates The Oath of Citizenship in which he or she swears to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. . . and bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
No citizen of the United States enjoys unfettered Freedom of Speech. The Supreme Court’s opinion is no one has the right to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Congress can make it illegal to threaten the security of the United States by yelling “Death to America!” in the same vein.
Congress needs to extend that five year term of loyalty to life for naturalized citizens and include adherence to the Oath of Citizenship.
In summary, there are ways to deport “Death to America” naturalized U.S. citizens, Permanent Residents and temporary residents. The only thing preventing their deportation is a presidential administration with the political will to enforce the laws.
