Hundreds of Immigrants Mistakenly Granted Citizenship
According to an internal audit recently released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. government accidentally granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries of national security concern or with high rates of immigration fraud who had pending deportation orders.
The DHS Inspector General found that the immigrants used different names or birthdates to apply for citizenship. Officials missed the discrepancies because the individuals’ fingerprints were missing from government databases.
The findings reflect an ongoing problem for immigration officials, namely old paper-based records containing fingerprint information that can’t be searched electronically. DHS is working on getting all of these files into electronic databases.
Officials are focusing their attention on cases involving people who have acquired security clearances, jobs of public trust, or other security credentials. The concern about mistakenly awarding citizenship is that it allows someone to apply for and potentially receive a security clearance or take a security-sensitive job without having gone through proper immigration screening procedures.
At least three of the people who were mistakenly granted citizenship acquired aviation or transportation worker credentials, giving them access to secure areas in airports or maritime facilities and vessels. Their credentials were revoked after they were identified as having been granted citizenship by mistake. A fourth individual is now a law enforcement officer.
The Inspector General has recommended that all of the outstanding cases be reviewed and finger prints in those cases be added to the government’s database and that immigration enforcement officials create a system to evaluate each of the cases of immigrants who were improperly granted citizenship. DHS officials agreed with the recommendations and are working to implement the changes.
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