HR-9447-119
Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Sponsored by Beth Van Duyne (R-TX)
What it does
This bill would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to require that courts automatically revoke citizenship for any naturalized citizen convicted under federal laws prohibiting material support for terrorism (18 U.S.C. §§2339A or 2339B). Upon such a conviction, the sentencing court would be required to void the person's naturalization certificate and cancel their citizenship as part of the criminal case, rather than through a separate civil denaturalization proceeding.
Who benefits
The federal government's national security and counterterrorism enforcement efforts, which gain a faster, automatic mechanism to strip citizenship from naturalized persons convicted of material support offenses. Prosecutors would benefit from consolidating criminal and denaturalization proceedings into a single case, reducing resources needed for separate civil litigation.
Who is hurt
Naturalized citizens convicted under these statutes, who would lose citizenship as an automatic consequence of conviction without a separate civil trial addressing denaturalization specifically. Their family members, including U.S.-citizen children whose derivative status or family unity could be affected, and immigration attorneys who currently rely on a distinct civil process with its own procedural protections and burden of proof.
Supporters argue
Supporters argue that individuals who provide material support to terrorist organizations have demonstrated they should never have been granted citizenship, and that automatic denaturalization upon conviction closes gaps where such offenders retain the rights and protections of citizenship. They contend that consolidating denaturalization into the criminal proceeding, where guilt has already been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, is more efficient than requiring a separate civil suit and prevents delays that allow convicted terrorists to retain citizenship for years.
Opponents argue
Opponents argue that automatic denaturalization tied directly to a criminal conviction, without the separate civil proceeding traditionally required, risks stripping a fundamental right — citizenship — without adequate due process safeguards specific to that determination, such as the clear-and-convincing evidence standard historically applied in denaturalization cases. They contend that creating two classes of citizens, where naturalized citizens face loss of citizenship for the same conduct that leaves natural-born citizens' citizenship untouched, raises serious equal protection and due process concerns.
Constitutional context
This bill implicates Congress's naturalization power (Art. I, §8, cl. 4) and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, since denaturalization strips a vested right of citizenship; the Supreme Court's decision in Afroyim v. Rusk (1967) held citizenship cannot be revoked without the citizen's voluntary relinquishment, though that case addressed involuntary expatriation rather than denaturalization for fraud or illegal procurement, and courts would likely also weigh Fedorenko v. United States and related denaturalization due process standards in evaluating this automatic mechanism.
Checks and balances
Congress would expand the automatic legal consequences of a federal criminal conviction, shifting denaturalization authority from a separate civil judicial proceeding into the criminal court itself, with judicial review remaining through appeals of the criminal conviction and constitutional challenges to the denaturalization mechanism.
Historical precedent
Existing law already allows denaturalization for naturalized citizens who engage in terrorism-related activity within five years of naturalization or conceal material facts during the naturalization process, but this bill would extend automatic denaturalization to any conviction under the material support statutes regardless of timing since naturalization.