In Florida, a woman wants to deprive of citizenship for cooperation in the investigation

Norma Borgogno immigrated to the United States from Peru in 1989. A single mother of two children found a job as a secretary and settled in a suburb of Miami, finding a job as a secretary. She dedicated herself to the church and became a grandmother early this year.

Photo: depositphotos.com

In 2007, she took the oath of citizenship and, it would seem, gained a new homeland. But it turns out that the Ministry of Justice had other plans and it annulled the citizenship of Borgogno, which could eventually make her return to Peru.

In May, federal prosecutors filed a rare denaturalization case against 64-year-old Borgogno, accusing her of committing fraud when applying for citizenship. It turns out that she indicated that she had participated in the commission of a crime several years before she applied for citizenship, although at that time she was not charged.

Only four years later, in 2011, Borgogno pleaded guilty to helping her boss, without resorting to gain, to deceive the United States Export-Import Bank with $ 24 million.

Since President Trump took office, the number of cases of denaturalization has increased, which is part of an aggressive immigration control campaign, and now even the most protected class of legal immigrants can lose their status.

The resumption of attention to denaturalization and the recent increase in the number of such cases makes many immigrants once again worry about possible immigration, despite having a US passport.

Citizenship also opens the door to voting, a fact that Democratic Party activists and others exploited before the 2016 election.

However, new impetus to the study of denaturalization threatens what was once reliable.

“You put a question mark next to the name of every naturalized citizen,” said David Leopold, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “And then you inspire fear.”

Denaturalization remains a rare, lengthy and difficult process, and the immigration authorities say that only people who deliberately lied to the government have any reason for concern. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) naturalizes from 700 000 to 750 000 people per year. In 2017, this number was 715 000 people, despite the 35-percent surge in applications that began on the eve of the last presidential election.

The increase requires USCIS to hire more employees, open two new offices and expand 10 existing offices to speed up work, although processing time has slowed. However, the agency states that in the first six months of this year more people naturalized than in the same period in each of the previous five years.

However, the number of denaturalization cases also increased: they averaged 11 per year from 1990 to 2017 per year, and their number increased to about 15 in 2016 and to 25 in 2017, according to the Ministry of Justice. About 20 cases were filed this year, the department said.

Last year, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that citizenship could not be revoked regarding minor lies in a statement.

The pending meth cases include cases against two men in Michigan and Florida. The Justice Department says it found evidence that the men did not disclose in their applications that they had deportation orders issued under other credentials.

However, the Borgogno case in Miami is different because it does not coincide with the database of fingerprints and its criminal conviction.

Borgogno worked with investigators to initiate a case against her boss and never earned a profit from her scheme for applying for bank loans. She was sentenced to house arrest by paying a small amount of restitution.

But prosecutors say that since this case was opened before Borgogno became naturalized, she had to indicate her involvement in the immigration authorities, which, perhaps, had then been denied her citizenship. Her lawyers say it is unclear whether Borgogno knew about her boss’s illegal scheme at the time.

Borgogno admitted her guilt, the prosecutors did not offer to revoke her citizenship, said Cerda, her lawyer, who asked the court to reject the denaturation case.

“There was no indication, no discussion that this could be used against her,” he said, saying Borgogno's defense might have gone differently if she had known her immigration status was in jeopardy.

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