Civil Denaturalization: Two Consent Judgments End Citizenship

Two naturalized Americans have lost their citizenship through civil denaturalization after agreeing to judgments instead of fighting the government at trial, the Justice Department announced Oct. 21. Federal judges in Northern California and South Florida entered the consent judgments on Oct. 13 and Oct. 14, closing cases against a Nigerian-born woman who once held a U.S. passport in another citizen’s name and a Cuban-born woman who laundered money from a casino fraud before she naturalized.

Neither case went to a contested hearing, and that is the point worth noticing. In both, the government’s proof came largely from a federal criminal conviction entered years after the oath ceremony. Once a naturalized citizen has admitted the underlying conduct in a criminal case, the later civil suit to revoke citizenship has little left to dispute.

The two cases

The case of Vivian Chike Obichere involves a multi-decade fraud scheme where she maintained two separate identities within federal databases. In 1992, the Nigerian native stole a U.S. citizen’s name, Social Security number, and birth details to secure a fraudulent U.S. passport, which she later renewed in 2002. Simultaneously, she built a legal track under her true identity, obtaining a green card in 2003. The scheme collapsed in 2012 when she concurrently applied for naturalization under her real name and tried to renew the alias passport; during her citizenship interview, she lied under oath by denying she had ever used another name. Though she naturalized in 2013, a subsequent federal fraud investigation uncovered the truth, leading to her 2015 criminal conviction for passport fraud and ultimately culminating on October 13, 2026, when a federal judge officially revoked her U.S. citizenship for being illegally procured through perjury.

Milagros Marileisis Acosta Torres, a native of Cuba, naturalized in 2015 after helping launder proceeds from a scheme that stole millions from a Florida tribal casino through false credit vouchers, the department said. She told USCIS she had never committed a crime for which she was not arrested. A 2020 money laundering conspiracy conviction brought six months in prison and nearly $150,000 in restitution. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate said the administration “will continue its historic denaturalization campaign.”

Why a later conviction makes civil denaturalization hard to resist

Civil denaturalization under 8 U.S.C. 1451(a) lets the government ask a federal judge to cancel citizenship that was “illegally procured” or obtained by concealing or misrepresenting a material fact. The government must prove its case by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence, a high bar. But a Congressional Research Service legal sidebar published in June notes two features that favor the government: civil cases have no statute of limitations, and defendants have no right to a court-appointed lawyer.

A prior conviction changes the math further. Conduct a person admits in a plea, or that a jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt, generally cannot be relitigated in the civil case. What remains is the legal question of whether the hidden conduct mattered, which the Supreme Court in Maslenjak v. United States (2017) framed as whether the lie played some role in the grant of citizenship. A hidden crime or a second identity sits squarely inside that test, so a defendant gains little by going to trial. That helps explain why both cases, filed June 8 and July 30, ended by agreement within about four months.

The Form N-400 question about crimes never charged is central to the Acosta Torres case, as it was in the criminal trial in Alaska that produced the Brian Smith citizenship verdict and in the Durham case. The Obichere case follows the concealed-identity theory behind the Chicago denaturalization suit.

The United States government can revoke a naturalized citizen’s status under 8 U.S.C. § 1451 through two distinct paths, both requiring a federal court order. The first is a civil proceeding, where the Department of Justice files an action in Federal District Court. In these cases, there is no statute of limitations, and the government must prove by clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence that the individual was ineligible for citizenship or obtained it fraudulently. The second path is a criminal proceeding, which involves a U.S. Attorney’s Office bringing criminal charges for naturalization fraud. Criminal denaturalization usually carries a 10-year statute of limitations and requires the highest legal burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Under both paths, the statutory grounds for stripping citizenship remain limited to showing that naturalization was illegally procured (meaning the applicant did not meet requirements like residency or good moral character), or that it was obtained through the concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation, such as lying about an identity or a past criminal record.

A faster pace, and what comes after revocation

For decades denaturalization was rare. Fewer than 150 people were denaturalized between 1968 and 2013, and more than 130 cases were reportedly filed from 2017 through 2025, according to the CRS sidebar. The department said Oct. 6 that it had filed 40 civil denaturalization complaints between Aug. 21 and Oct. 2, which it called the most in a single period under this administration. A June 2025 Civil Division memo made these cases an enforcement priority. The Biden administration took the opposite view in a 2021 executive order, which said denaturalization should not be “used excessively or inappropriately.”

Losing citizenship usually returns a person to the status held before naturalization, typically lawful permanent residence, the CRS sidebar explains. It also quotes longstanding Justice Department practice that the government does not bring civil denaturalization cases “unless the ultimate goal is the removal” of the person. The announcement says nothing about removal proceedings for either woman; that question will likely turn on how immigration authorities classify each conviction and what relief is available in immigration court.

By agreeing to a consent judgment, the defendants primarily changed the legal efficiency and certainty of the outcome, ultimately saving significant time, money, and stress for both sides. Rather than enduring a costly and highly public federal trial, the defendants conceded the case to avoid a protracted legal battle and potentially negotiate terms that shielded them from separate criminal charges or asset forfeitures. For the government, securing a consent judgment guarantees a permanent victory because the defendants waive their right to appeal, eliminating the risk of years of secondary litigation. While the ultimate penalty remained the same—both women still lost their American citizenship—the agreement allowed all parties to bypass a complex evidentiary process and resolve the decades-old fraud cases on definitive, controlled terms.

With dozens of complaints filed in weeks, consent judgments let the government close cases without trials, and the likeliest candidates are citizens whose criminal records already hold the facts. Contested cases, like the civil suit over a former H-1B worker’s job history, where no criminal conviction exists, are where courts will test how far the campaign can reach.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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