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    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    Donald Trump's denaturalization task force is a new way to threaten the American Drea

    Donald Trump's denaturalization task force is a new way to threaten the American Dream

    Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Opinion contributor Published 4:00 a.m. ET July 24, 2018

    I became a naturalized citizen in January after an arduous 16-year process. Like many immigrants who come to these shores, I was fleeing danger and I also had practical reasons: I wanted to study journalism, which was a deadly profession in my native Colombia. But slowly, without my conscious knowing, I was changing and adapting, and one day I knew I was American.

    In June the Trump administration set up a denaturalization task force with the goal of deporting some 2,000 naturalized citizens who are suspected of “cheating” on their citizenship applications by omitting or failing to mention any aliases or iterations of their names that may have been used before. My name, for example, is Ingrid Rojas Contreras, but by mistake, on some forms I am listed as Ingrid Rojas, or worse, Ingrid Contreras.

    Had I not listed these — which I did — the FBI would have not been able to crosscheck its database. But in the imagination of the denaturalization task force, those 2,000 naturalized citizens omitted an alias in order to hide a previous deportation order. Now these naturalized citizens are about to be taken to civil court where they will not have the right to a court-appointed lawyer, and some may not have the means to seek proper representation.

    Having recently gone through the immigration vetting system, I know that the potential to make an error is immense. I can also say that the process is not only exacting, but invasive and at times humiliating. I have been tracked, scanned, recorded, photographed, and made to speak into the blinking red light of a camera more times than I can count.

    Any mistake is a huge mistake

    The Customs and Immigration Services is housed in intimidating buildings and schedules appointments that cannot be missed. In language, their forms and paperwork are structured to offer an olive branch with one sentence and a veiled threat with the next. "Notice of Action..." they say. “Authorization for Parole of an Alien into the United States.” Then in fine print and bolded: “Parole into the United States is not guaranteed.”

    Reading the forms left me jittery, like at any moment I might decompose into a pile of undesirable adjectives: liability, deportable, inadmissible; so I hired an immigration lawyer, but mostly spoke to her assistant. It seemed like the forms were endless, and I filled them out late at night, tired and sipping tea, checking and rechecking dates, addresses, numbers. The assistant repeatedly told me that any little mistake could result in a denial of new status — and I would be deported.

    For 16 years, the threat of deportation hung over every little thing I had to keep track of. If I moved, and failed to notify authorities within two weeks, I would be deported. If I was charged with any crime or even cited with a ticket, the government could decide I didn’t have good moral character, and I could get deported. I have easily docked around 470 hours, spent around $25,000, and submitted 23 forms. My whole application, at 283 pages, is as long as a novella.

    Lawyers understand the importance of a glitch in the paperwork. The Trump administration has been trying since last year to use mistakes as reasons to reverse as many citizenships as possible. In Maslenjak vs. United States, the Justice Department argued to the Supreme Court that it had the right to denaturalize and deport any citizen if that person lied, even by omission, anywhere in their application.

    One of the questions on Form N400 to apply for citizenship is “Have you EVER committed, assisted in committing,or attempted to commit a crime or offense, for which you were NOT arrested?” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts asked what if he once sped 60 mph in a 55 mph zone and was not caught — if he were he a naturalized citizen who failed to disclose such a "crime" on his application, would he be deported? Incredibly, the Justice Department thought yes.

    This suggests that the new scrutiny of immigration, including the denaturalization task force, is not meant to correct a bureaucratic mistakes but rather to purge the country of as many immigrants as possible. “To start a process where we take back our country,” to quote President Donald Trump, speaking in 2017 to Fox News about possibly stripping citizenship from American-born citizens with undocumented parents.

    Denaturalizations are supposed to be a very rare occurrence. Since 1990, only 305 civil cases have been brought to court. The last time America had a denaturalization task force was in the McCarthy era, when naturalized citizens suspected of communism were promptly disowned and kicked out.

    All immigrants undergo a rigorous vetting process. In my case, I held three types of student visas and a green card before I finally obtained an American passport. When I got married to my American husband, we had to prove to the government that our relationship was real. We submitted sworn statements from myself, my sister and my brother-in-law attesting to this fact.

    Our “evidence” was scores of personal pictures I am not sure I would share with close friends. “Jeremiah and I enjoy taking camping trips. We went to Zion State Park in 2007. See exhibit G (Walking the trail at Zion Park in Illinois.),” reads one line in my statement. I often thought of all the immigration officers who came across information I would never volunteer to share. They would know that short hair was not my best look. They would know how I look Christmas morning before showering. They would know that I wore a mauve silk dress to my sister’s wedding, and that I made the mistake of not wearing a bra. They would have seen what I look like at a funeral. They could have noted how my weight seems to go up and down every other year, and that on my wedding day I wore green and that my husband and I wore a long pearl necklace over both our necks.

    At the end of all of this, Jeremiah and I had to go to an interview where under oath we did a show and tell of the progression of our relationship using our family albums. Even when we showed images of us dressed up for a bike parade in ridiculous handmade costumes — Jeremiah was an elephant with floppy cardboard ears and I was a black cat — the immigration officer never cracked a smile.

    In addition to the piles of paperwork, there are biometric appointments where they take photographs and collect fingerprints. Often, I was roughly handled by immigration officers who didn’t speak to me. They roughly placed me in the square where I was to be photographed. They grabbed my hand and bent it so that they could get my fingerprints. Just once, there was an immigration officer who held my hand and fingers as if I could break, and it was like a soft, apologetic intrusion.

    To qualify for my green card, my blood was drawn, I was tested for tuberculosis and AIDS, I was given an x-ray, and I was made to strip to my underwear. The doctor did not leave the room as I stripped. She did not turn away either, but stared with a breathless focus I would have flagged as sexual had I been a few years older or more sure of myself. I was 26.

    After staring attentively, she advanced on me, leading with the cap-end of her pen, and pressed it into my thigh. “What are these bruises?” I told her I’d been moving and carrying boxes. She asked, baffled, “Don’t you have any friends?” I stared at the ceiling. She circumnavigated me, bending to look closely at blemishes, bruises, moles, the usual human marks. She rose on tiptoe and dug her pen in my scalp. I had nowhere to look but at her lab coat.

    She made a disgruntled noise and told me I had dandruff, didn't I know there was shampoo for that? She bent over her desk and marked it in my file. That was how extreme my vetting had been — the doctor noted in my file that I had dandruff.

    A different America for immigrants

    I remember being in tears after that exam. I left the building shaking and called my sister, who was going to law school in Minnesota. When I told her, she jumped on her computer, sure what had happened to me was illegal. It was not. You cannot qualify for a green card if you have a communicable disease and if the doctor had deemed it necessary she could have even looked at my “external genitalia” under protection of the law.

    Immigrants know a different America than American-born citizens. It’s an America that treats people like specimens splayed under a microscope. But because we love the America that stands up for liberty and justice and opportunity for all, we insist on naturalization. After everything I went through to prove my humanity and worth to the government, when I imagine the possible reversal of my status, I am heartbroken.

    A denaturalization task force is neither fair nor just. As naturalized citizens we are told we enjoy the same rights as the American-born, but while citizens cannot be tried for the same crime twice, decisions on naturalized citizens can always be reversed. More than others, this particular administration is intent on not letting naturalized citizens forget that we are foreign-born, and it is intent on reminding us with how much derision it beholds this fact. Our foreign birth is a perpetually open door through which we can always be kicked out.

    Naturalized citizens are citizens. In the face of a concerted effort to denaturalize and deport us, America’s own citizens are no longer safe from this administration. The denaturalization task force is a new frontier of erosion on the American Dream.

    You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...umn/815592002/
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  2. #2
    Senior Member Judy's Avatar
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    President Trump isn't going to take someone's citizenship away from them without due cause. He has no reason or motive to do that. What he is addressing is removing people who lied on their applications or have violated their agreements that would cancel their rights to hold citizenship because they gained or held citizenship fraudulently, which means they weren't entitled to it to begin with. How else do you correct this wrong except by denaturalization? There is no other proper solution, which is why we have laws providing for this.
    A Nation Without Borders Is Not A Nation - Ronald Reagan
    Save America, Deport Congress! - Judy

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  3. #3
    Moderator Beezer's Avatar
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    It is a privilege to come here and WE extend that privilege, it is not a right.

    It should be expensive, people need to be extremely vetted and no diseases or criminal background.

    We cannot just charge 10 bucks a head and allow 2 billion people on the planet to come here.

    We do not want ANY public charge...no taxpayer benefits. YOU earn them.

    I prefer a 10 year moratorium on ALL immigration including refugees, legal immigrants, TPS, asylum and illegal aliens.

    We have been OVERRUN by foreigners fleeing their countries.

    GO HOME AND BUILD AMERICA ON YOUR SOIL.

    STOP ALLOWING PEOPLE TO ABANDON THEIR COUNTRY! WE FOUGHT FOR OURS AND THEY CAN FIGHT FOR THEIRS!

    SEND THEM BACK AND STOP BRINGING MORE HERE!

    IF DIVERSIFICATION IS SO GREAT...THEN START DIVERSIFIYING THEIRS!

    SEND ILLEGAL ALIENS TO THE MIDDLE EAST, MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, AFRICA AND ALL THESE COUNTRIES THEY ARE COMING HERE FROM! GO DIVERSIFY THEM!

    WE ARE FED UP AND FULL UP...NO VACANCY!
    ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE "BROKEN" OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

    DO NOT REWARD THEM - DEPORT THEM ALL

  4. #4
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    Ingrid Rojas Contreras:
    I was changing and adapting, and one day I knew I was American.
    And how many do we see that have been here that long and have never learned English?
    In June the Trump administration set up a denaturalization task force with the goal of deporting some 2,000 naturalized citizens who are suspected of “cheating” on their citizenship applications by omitting or failing to mention any aliases or iterations of their names that may have been used before.
    Many government forms ask for all aliases a person has gone by. Nothing unique there.
    For 16 years, the threat of deportation hung over every little thing I had to keep track of. If I moved, and failed to notify authorities within two weeks, I would be deported. If I was charged with any crime or even cited with a ticket, the government could decide I didn’t have good moral character, and I could get deported.
    And you don't understand that?

    Just one more sob story!

  5. #5
    Senior Member lorrie's Avatar
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    Oh well, and your point is?


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