U.S. top court sets higher bar for stripping citizenship

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - The Supreme Court handed a setback to the Trump administration yesterday by making it harder for the government to strip immigrants of U.S. citizenship in a case involving an ethnic Serb woman who lied about her husband’s military service after Yugoslavia’s collapse.

The justices ruled 9-0 that a naturalized American citizen cannot be stripped of citizenship if a lie or omission on immigration forms was irrelevant to the government’s original decision to grant entry into the United States.

They rejected the Trump administration’s stance that the government should be able to revoke citizenship of people for even minor misstatements in the citizenship application process.

The court sided with Divna Maslenjak, who had her citizenship revoked and was deported to Serbia after being convicted of breaking immigration law by falsely stating her husband had not served in the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s. She entered the United States as a refugee.

President Donald Trump has sought to restrict immigration and deport people who have entered the United States illegally.

“This decision will ensure that lawful permanent residents who take the next step by becoming U.S. citizens do not have to live in fear that their rights may be revoked at any time,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund.

The ruling set a higher bar for the government to convict naturalized citizens for making false statements in the application process.

“We hold that the government must establish that an illegal act by the defendant played some role in her acquisition of citizenship,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

“We have never read a statute to strip citizenship from someone who met the legal criteria for acquiring it. We will not start now,” Kagan added.

The legal question was whether Maslenjak’s false statements had a material effect on the U.S. decision to grant her refugee status. The Trump administration argued it only mattered that she made a false statement, not whether it had any impact on its decision to grant refugee status.