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Tag: Citizenship

  • Exclusive: Dick Durbin blasts Kristi Noem on proof of citizenship threat

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    Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin wrote to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem on Friday, telling her he was outraged at “repeated targeting and racial profiling” of American citizens by her agents carrying out “citizen checks.”

    In a letter exclusively shared with Newsweek, the Democrat told Noem that statements she and U.S. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino had made that U.S. citizens needed to prove their identity were false.

    “To state the obvious, we are not a ‘papers, please’ country,” Durbin wrote. “American citizens generally do not have ‘immigration documents’, and to require them to carry such documents to avoid being violently stopped or interrogated by federal immigration agents is absurd and unconstitutional. There is no requirement in the law for U.S. citizens to carry identification to avoid arbitrary arrest and detention.”

    Why It Matters

    The letter came after Noem spoke to reporters on Thursday, saying that ICE agents may ask U.S. citizens for proof of citizenship during enforcement operations that have seen protesters clash with federal officers and citizens temporarily detained. Some video has shown citizens reacting angrily to such requests, saying they do not need to prove who they are, with concerns around Fourth Amendment protections.

    What To Know

    “If we are on a target, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there and having them validate their identity,” Noem said Thursday, after questions over why some Americans were being asked for proof of citizenship.

    Bovino, who has been the face of DHS’ large-scale operations in Chicago, Charlotte and now Minnesota, has made comments on social media with a similar message, adding that a REAL ID is not proof of citizenship.

    Durbin, who has been outspoken over the Trump administration’s actions over the past year already, said he was deeply concerned at Bovino’s comments.

    “The founders included explicit protections from unreasonable searches and seizures in the U.S. Constitution to prevent the types of arbitrary and indiscriminate arrests of U.S. citizens that are currently occurring in American cities,” Durbin told Noem, adding that current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh had affirmed these protections recently.

    “Unfortunately, these caveats have not prevented an escalating number of arbitrary stops, arrests, and detentions of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents,” the senator added.

    He went on to outline multiple incidents in Minnesota alone in the past few weeks, which have seen U.S. citizens detained by federal agents, who at times have been seen using aggressive tactics to do so. Tensions have been especially high in the Twin Cities following the death of Renee Nicole Good, who was shot by an ICE agent on January 7.

    “The Department’s cavalier attitude towards the law continues to lead to frequent abuses against American citizens,” Durbin wrote.

    The senator also said that agents had approached multiple non-white people in Minneapolis, and elsewhere, and asked where they were born and for their identification, with at least one person told “we are doing a citizen check.”

    Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), immigrants in the U.S. are required to carry proof of their status. The rule has not been strictly enforced through fines for several years, but under the Trump administration, there have been a few instances of people being fined for not carrying documentation.

    When the rules were tightened, some experts did warn that if one group had to carry documentation, then all people in the U.S. would be affected, even if not legally required to carry proof of nationality.

    The Trump administration, including Noem and Bovino, has insisted agents are working within the law to enforce immigration laws and deliver on the president’s promise of mass deportations of illegal immigrant criminals. DHS has also made it clear that it will seek to prosecute anyone who attacks or impedes federal agents in this work.

    What People Are Saying

    Durbin, in his letter to Noem: “Terrifying experiences like these undoubtedly will become more commonplace for American citizens unless the Department abides by the law and reins in its reckless immigration enforcement operations.

    “Please immediately issue a correction to the Department’s false statement that U.S. citizens must carry proof of citizenship and immediately instruct your employees that unconstitutional “citizen checks” are not permitted and must immediately cease.”

    Mubashir, a Minnesota community member, to members of Congress Friday: “At no time did any officer ask me whether I was a citizen or if I had any immigration status. They did not ask for any identifying information, nor did they ask about my ties to the community, how long I had lived in the Twin Cities, my family in Minnesota, or anything else about my circumstances.”

    Bovino, on X December 11: “One must carry immigration documents as per the INA. A Real ID is not an immigration document.”

    Michael McAuliffe, former federal prosecutor and ex-elected state attorney, to Newsweek Thursday: “Standing near someone who may be illegally in the country is not a crime, and is not––alone––grounds to require someone to identify themselves. If one adds to the scenario any facts that might support a suspicion that a person is helping the suspect, or obstructing the agent’s attempts to evaluate the suspect’s status, it could change what the officer can do in terms of seeking identification, requiring someone to move, or detaining the person.”

    What Happens Next

    As protests and enforcement efforts continue across the U.S., Durbin has called for Noem to respond with information on the questions DHS officials are legally allowed to ask people to determine citizenship, what documents were shared with agents giving the impression they were allowed to carry out “citizen checks,” and what criteria agents are using to determine if there is a reason to believe a person is not legally in the U.S.

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  • The Supreme Court Gets Back to Work

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    There are distinctive aspects to both of the transgender-athletes cases. For one thing, Hecox has changed her mind about bringing the case—she has said that she no longer wants to play sports at B.S.U., and that the Supreme Court should consider the matter moot. The Justices have said that they will decide on that question after oral arguments. Pepper-Jackson, meanwhile, brought what is known as an “as applied” challenge, meaning that she is not arguing that the ban could never hold up, but that it is unconstitutional and discriminatory as applied to her, given that she transitioned at a young age and took puberty blockers followed by other hormone therapies to forestall standard male puberty. (Last year, in U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on such treatments for minors—a harbinger for this case.) B.P.J. lost at the district-court level but succeeded on appeal in the Fourth Circuit, and has been able to keep playing during the litigation. Her recent relative success as a high schooler in shot-put and discus events has become a point of dispute; her lawyers claim that her prowess has been exaggerated, while the governor of West Virginia complained about her participation in a statewide tournament (where she came in third in the discus event). A central question in the cases is what and whom Title IX, the federal anti-sex-discrimination law that has allowed girls’ and women’s school sports to develop in recent decades, was meant to protect. It is a good bet that the oral arguments will include a grab bag of claims about the physiology of children and adults as well as reflections on the emotional and social meaning of sports and on profound questions of identity and fairness.

    Next week, the Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Cook, a case that came to the Justices on the emergency docket—it involves a lower-court judge’s stay of Trump’s removal of Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, from her position. In a general sense, it is linked to Trump v. Slaughter, the case about the leadership of independent agencies, which was argued in December. In Slaughter, the Justices are expected to allow Trump to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, without cause (and, in doing so, to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, a precedent from the nineteen-thirties, which allowed Congress to insulate the heads of agencies led by multiple commissioners or governors, such as the F.T.C., from being fired at will by the President). But Cook’s case is different, for a few reasons. The Supreme Court has, in the past, indicated that the Fed’s independence is distinct and worth safeguarding. The Fed’s credibility is also important to both the U.S. and the world economy. And although Trump says that he dismissed Cook for cause, it’s not clear how good his cause was. The Trump Administration accused her of engaging in mortgage fraud; a question in the case is whether the Court is expected to take this claim at face value. (His Administration has levied the same charge against other opponents, such as the New York attorney general, Letitia James. Both James and Cook have denied the allegations.)

    Oral arguments in one of the most consequential cases of the term, Trump v. Barbara, on the question of whether Trump can order the denial of birthright citizenship to certain babies born in the United States, still need to be scheduled. There is perhaps no other case in which the Justices will need to lay their allegiances as bare as in that one. That ruling, too, may not come until the end of June or even early July. What will the Justices be saying if they announce, in the week that the country celebrates the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, that the meaning of citizenship has in some way changed? The Court doesn’t seem entirely in Trump’s hands; before Christmas, siding with the state of Illinois, it kept in place a lower court’s order blocking Trump from deploying a federalized National Guard in Chicago and its suburbs. At the same time, the Court managed to leave open questions about what Trump might do with the Guard, and even with the regular military, in the future.

    There is more, including a challenge the Justices will hear, on March 2nd, to a law restricting gun ownership for habitual drug users—a statute under which Hunter Biden, the former President’s son, was convicted, before his father pardoned him. Another case to be scheduled concerns a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots to be counted if they arrive up to five days after Election Day, if they are postmarked by Election Day. Perhaps predictably, the discussions around that case have been rife with accusations of voter fraud. Politics and the law are never all that far apart. This spring, in front of this Supreme Court, they may be almost inseparable. ♦

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    Amy Davidson Sorkin

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  • Is the Supreme Court Unsure About Birthright Citizenship?

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    The big prize for the White House, of course, would be an end to birthright citizenship, which many conservatives and opponents of immigration have come to deeply resent, with talk of “anchor babies” and demographic doom. Unfortunately for them, birthright citizenship is not some misty, novel concept or expansion of ill-defined rights. It is the hard promise, in plain language, of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave citizenship to previously enslaved Black Americans but was recognized from the beginning as having a broader effect. The citizenship clause reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

    The opponents of birthright citizenship hang their arguments, such as they are, on the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” In 1898, which was only thirty years after the amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court ruled definitively on the meaning of that phrase in the case of Wong Kim Ark, a man born in California to Chinese immigrants who were precluded from becoming citizens by the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Court ruled that the only babies born in the U.S. but not “subject” to its jurisdiction in this sense were those born to “foreign sovereigns” or diplomats (for example, if a French ambassador happened to give birth in the U.S.); or those born on a foreign-government-owned ship within U.S. territorial borders; or those born to “enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory.” The “single additional exception,” the Court said, was the case of children born to certain Native American tribes, based on treaty relations that they then had with the federal government.

    The Native American exception was, at the time, the most consequential, and had its own dark history. It was, however, for the most part done away with as a result of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. One fascinating aspect of Trump v. Barbara will be seeing what Justice Neil Gorsuch—a conservative who is also, somewhat idiosyncratically, an expert on and champion of tribal legal rights—makes of Wong Kim Ark’s legacy. In sum, Wong’s was a landmark case, not an obscure one, and the Court referred back to it in the decades that followed; its majority opinion in a 1957 case, for example, notes that a baby born to parents in the United States illegally “is, of course, an American citizen by birth.” Legislators shared that understanding of birthright citizenship when Congress incorporated the Fourteenth Amendment’s language into federal law, in 1940 and 1952.

    Trump’s executive order represents a complete break with that history. It says that a baby is not a citizen if the mother has no legal status, or if her status is legal but only temporary (for example, if she is on a work or student visa), and if the father is not a citizen or legal permanent resident. Incredibly, the Administration, in its petition to the Supreme Court, argues not only that the order is legal but that the Court can uphold it without overruling the Wong Kim Ark precedent, which it claims has been “misread” for more than a hundred years.

    In defense of this indefensible position, the Administration notes that Justice Horace Gray, who wrote the majority opinion in the case, mentioned a number of times that Wong Kim Ark’s parents were “resident” or “domiciled” in the United States. But, as the lawyers for the Barbara babies have argued, Gray went further, saying that anyone residing in the U.S. is clearly subject to its jurisdiction and, importantly, that those here just temporarily are subject to it, too. (Again, the narrow exceptions had to do with diplomats, invaders, and Native Americans.) If you are in the U.S. just temporarily, as a tourist or a student, say, you are still bound by American laws and the government’s authority.

    Yet the Administration not only acts as if residency is a magic condition but offers a completely illogical and contradictory definition of what residency is. If parental residency is a requirement, then Trump’s lawyers are making a pretty good case for the citizenship of babies whose parents have lived established lives in this country for years or decades—whatever their legal status. But the Administration’s brief slips between the terms “resident” and “lawful permanent resident,” as if they meant the same thing. And if a parent acting unlawfully, perhaps by staying in the U.S. despite a deportation order, precludes a baby’s citizenship, why are the children of native-born criminals unquestionably citizens? (Actually, one might worry about how Trump would answer that question.)

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    Amy Davidson Sorkin

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  • Supreme Court to Review Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order

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    The Supreme Court is looking to consider the executive order that lower courts have blocked as unconstitutional.

    The Supreme Court is set to meet in private on Friday with the Trump Administration’s Birthright Citizenship order on the agenda.

    The debate on Birthright Citizenship centers on children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily and how that determines the child’s citizenship status. Currently, if a child is born in the United States, then they, with rare exceptions, become an American citizen, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status. Trump wants to get rid of this rule.

    So far, the order to strike down the rule has been blocked by lower courts across the US. But if the Supreme Court decides to step in now, the case will be argued in the spring and bring a definitive ruling by early summer.

    The Birthright Citizenship order was signed by Trump on his first day of his second term in the white house. As a part of his greater plans for immigration, like increased immigration enforcement in several cities, and the first peacetime usage of the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act.

    It’s hard to say what the high court may say about this issue, because there has been a mixed bag of responses to Trump’s immigration related orders. They stopped the usage of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without court hearings. But they have allowed the resumption of sweeping immigration stops in and around Los Angeles. An order that was originally stopped by a lower court on the practice of stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.

    This is the first of the Trump Administration-related immigration policies to reach the Supreme Court for a final ruling. Lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional. If the order passes, then it would contradict more than 125 years of how the U.S. interprets the 14th Amendment. A part of the Constitution that confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil.

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    Tara Nguyen

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  • Opinion | Why America Is a ‘Creedal Nation’

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    Democracy is a powerful and dangerous force, as America and the European democracies are discovering. Elites on both sides of the Atlantic haven’t done a very good job of handling it.

    We have some anniversaries coming up next year that may help us. We have, of course, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The same day is the bicentennial of the deaths of the two founders most responsible for that great document, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration is vital to understanding who we are as Americans.

    Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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    Gordon S. Wood

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  • The Liberal Scholars Who Influenced Trump’s Attack on Birthright Citizenship

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    The amendment was debated in the Senate in 1866, as the Reconstruction Congress attempted to suture the nation together after the Civil War and secure rights for freed slaves. At that time, discussion of the Citizenship Clause mostly focussed on the question of Native Americans on tribal lands within U.S. territory. The words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” Lyman Trumbull, a senator from Illinois, explained, prevented members of those tribes from receiving birthright citizenship, since they were beyond the nation’s “complete jurisdiction.” (Two other groups were similarly excluded: children born to foreign diplomats and those born to a hostile occupying force.)

    To Schuck and Smith, that conclusion was revelatory. The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” must mean more than the mere accident of birth. It seemed to denote a mutual compact—people whose sole allegiance was to the U.S., and who were intentionally accepted by the government. Given that the phenomenon of illegal immigration didn’t exist when the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted, they reasoned, the clause simply didn’t apply to children born on U.S. soil whose parents had come here “without consent.” Nor did the prevailing Supreme Court precedent, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), seem to address them, since it concerned a man whose parents were legal immigrants. Schuck and Smith concluded that Congress could limit future birthright citizenship to the offspring of citizens and permanent residents—a notion that “has to our knowledge never been seriously considered.” Smith told me he didn’t believe Congress should do this, only that it could. “We thought it was provocative,” he said.

    Various academic peers deemed their novel reading “seriously flawed,” “simply puzzling,” and “morally incoherent.” “People were shocked,” recalled the Harvard immigration scholar Gerald Neuman. “The settled understanding had been settled for so long.” Undocumented immigrants, critics pointed out in a flurry of law-review essays, were obviously bound by the U.S. legal system. Trumbull had been speaking of Native Americans on the frontier or on reservations that largely operated as quasi-foreign states under treaties with Washington. Like foreign diplomats and their families, they couldn’t be sued or prosecuted in federal court. (Native Americans wouldn’t be granted citizenship until 1924.)

    Some of the book’s arguments, Neuman said, “are just made in ignorance of history.” Immigration was not entirely unregulated, he pointed out, before the Fourteenth Amendment was written. States barred the entry of “paupers” and the “infirm”; Southern legislatures prohibited the entry of free Black people. In 1803, Congress made it a federal offense to bring any “people of color” into the country, to prevent an influx of free Black immigrants fleeing the Haitian revolution.

    The amendment’s opponents were also acutely aware that it would extend citizenship to the children of immigrants they did not want to let in. Edgar Cowan, a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, warned of an invasion of “gypsies” who “pay no taxes; who never perform military service; who do nothing, in fact, which becomes the citizen, and perform none of the duties which devolve upon him, but, on the other hand, have no homes, pretend to own no land, live nowhere, settle as trespassers wherever they go.” He also feared “a flood of immigration of the Mongol race,” demanding, “Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen?” Although Chinese immigrants were then barred from naturalizing, the response from the California senator John Conness, another Republican, was unequivocal: U.S.-born children “of all parentage whatever” would be citizens. With these possibilities in plain view, the amendment was ratified in 1868.

    Above all, legal experts concluded, Schuck and Smith had misconstrued the Fourteenth Amendment’s purpose. The Constitution barely mentioned citizenship, in part because disagreements over slavery made it impossible to agree on a definition. In the Dred Scott case, of 1857, the Supreme Court supplied one, ruling that no person of African descent, free or enslaved, could be an American citizen. The Fourteenth Amendment’s authors sought to establish an expansive, titanium-clad definition of citizenship that couldn’t be dismantled by the courts, Congress, or the President. In a blistering review of “Citizenship Without Consent” titled “Back to Dred Scott?” Neuman concluded that Schuck and Smith had, at best, “identified a strategy by which a court, determined to deny citizenship to American-born children of undocumented aliens, could justify such a holding.”

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    Rachel Morris

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  • Can the US government strip Mamdani of his citizenship?

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    After Zohran Mamdani handily won the New York City mayoral election, becoming the city’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor-elect, Republican detractors in Washington said they would try to stop him from taking office.

    President Donald Trump, who threatened to withhold federal funds to New York City if Mamdani won, lent credence to misleading questions about Mamdani’s citizenship and falsely accused the Ugandan-born 34-year-old of being a communist.

    Some Republican lawmakers requested investigations into Mamdani’s naturalization process and have called for stripping him of his U.S. citizenship and deporting him, accusing him without evidence of embracing communist and terrorist activities. 

    “If Mamdani lied on his naturalization documents, he doesn’t get to be a citizen, and he certainly doesn’t get to run for mayor of New York City. A great American city is on the precipice of being run by a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology,” Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., said in an Oct. 29 press release after asking U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Mamdani. “The American naturalization system REQUIRES any alignments with communism or terrorist activities to be disclosed. I’m doubtful he disclosed them. If this is confirmed, put him on the first flight back to Uganda.”

    Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., misrepresented Mamdani’s time in the U.S. when he said Oct. 27 on Newsmax, “The barbarians are no longer at the gate, they’re inside. … And Mamdani, having just moved here eight years ago, is a great example of that, becoming a citizen. Look, it is clear with much of what I have read that he did not meet the definition to gain citizenship.”

    PolitiFact found no credible evidence that Mamdani lied on his citizenship application. 

    Born in Uganda, Mamdani moved to the U.S. in 1998 when he was 7 and became a U.S. citizen in 2018. For adults to become U.S. citizens, they generally must have lived continuously in the country as a lawful permanent resident for five years, or three years if married to a U.S. citizen.

    Denaturalization, the process of revoking a person’s citizenship, can be done only by judicial order. It’s been used sparingly, such as for removing Nazis who fled to the U.S. after World War II or people convicted of or associated with terrorism.

    Immigration law experts said they have seen no evidence to support Ogles and Fine’s assertions about Mamdani’s application.

    “Denaturalization is an extreme, rare remedy that requires the government to prove either illegal procurement or a willful, material lie — at a minimum, clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence that the fact would have changed the outcome at the time of naturalization,” said immigration lawyer Jeremy McKinney. “I’ve seen no credible proof he was ineligible when he took the oath or that any omission was material.” 

    Ogles and Fine did not respond to PolitiFact’s requests for comment by publication.

    Attacks on Mamdani’s naturalization process are flimsy, immigration experts say

    The push to question Mamdani’s citizenship started in the summer when he became the Democratic mayoral nominee.

    In a June letter to Bondi, Ogles asked the Justice Department to pursue denaturalization proceedings against Mamdani, “on the grounds that he may have procured U.S. citizenship through willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism.”

    Ogles cited rap lyrics Mamdani wrote in 2017 supporting the “Holy Land Five,” a reference to five men in the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity, convicted in 2008 of providing material support to the terrorist group Hamas. Some lawyers have criticized the case’s evidence and use of hearsay.

    Ogles and Fine said Mamdani did not disclose his Democratic Socialists of America membership on his citizenship application form; the lawmakers say it’s a communist organization and Mamdani’s involvement could have disqualified him from citizenship. 

    The U.S. naturalization form asks whether applicants have been a member, involved in or associated with any communist or totalitarian party. But the Democratic Socialists of America is not a communist party.

    Democratic socialism emerged as an alternative to communism, Harvey Klehr, an Emory University expert on the history of American communism, previously told PolitiFact. Democratic socialists’ generally “reject the communist hostility to representative democracy, as well as the communist belief in state ownership of the means of production,” Klehr said. 

    McKinney said, “DSA membership isn’t a bar to citizenship; failing to list a lawful political group on the (naturalization form) doesn’t become fraud unless disclosure would have led to a denial. A lyric referencing the Holy Land Five is protected speech absent actual material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

    PolitiFact reached out to Mamdani for comment but did not hear back.

    RELATED: NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is not a communist 

    A push to keep Mamdani from taking office

    The New York Young Republican Club is taking a different tactic, citing the 14th Amendment, the New York Post reported.  

    The amendment bars from office anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or who has “given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the country. The state GOP group said Mamdani provided “aid and comfort” to U.S. enemies by supporting “pro-Hamas” groups and said he supports gangs through his calls to resist Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

    This would be a longshot push for Congress to declare Mamdani ineligible for office, requiring a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. If passed, it still could be challenged up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Immigration experts told PolitiFact that calls to resist ICE agents do not trigger the 14th Amendment, as the relevant clause targets insurrection and aid to wartime enemies, not domestic policy criticism.

    A woman clutches a U.S. flag as she and applicants from 20 countries prepare to take the oath of citizenship in commemoration of Independence Day during a Naturalization Ceremony in San Antonio, July 3, 2025. (AP)

    How denaturalization cases take shape

    The Justice Department can strip U.S. citizenship by filing criminal charges for naturalization fraud or a civil lawsuit. 

    In either case, the government would have to prove that an applicant made a false statement in a citizenship application, and show that the statement would have affected the application.

    The government’s standard to clear in a criminal case — proving guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”— is higher than a civil case standard of presenting “clear and convincing evidence.” The more common civil process lacks certain constitutional protections such as the right to a court-appointed lawyer, Cassandra Burke Robertson, a Case Western Reserve University law professor who studies denaturalization, said.

    Robertson said it’s “extraordinarily unlikely that a proceeding against Mamdani would gain any traction.” 

    “The bigger risk, in my mind, is the potential chilling effect on individuals with fewer resources who might be afraid to speak out against the government,” Robertson said.

    Although denaturalizations generally have been rare in the U.S., they’ve become more frequent under the Trump administration, Irina Manta, a Hofstra University law professor who studies denaturalization, said.

    In June, the Justice Department issued a memo directing attorneys to prioritize denaturalization cases. The memo’s list of priority categories includes people who the administration says pose national security concerns, gang members and a catchall category for “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”

    If Mamdani were to have his citizenship revoked, his immigration status would revert to his previous one — lawful permanent residence. That would disqualify him from serving as New York City mayor.

    PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. 

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  • Federal Judge Rules Trump Can’t Require Citizenship Proof On The Federal Voting Form – KXL

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    Voters wait in line to cast their ballot at a polling place at Rowan College in Mount Laurel, N.J., Monday, Oct. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

    NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s request to add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form cannot be enforced, a federal judge ruled Friday.

    U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., sided with Democratic and civil rights groups that sued the Trump administration over his executive order to overhaul U.S. elections.

    She ruled that the proof-of-citizenship directive is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers, dealing a blow to the administration and its allies who have argued that such a mandate is necessary to restore public confidence that only Americans are voting in U.S. elections.

    “Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her opinion.

    She further emphasized that on matters related to setting qualifications for voting and regulating federal election procedures “the Constitution assigns no direct role to the President in either domain.”

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    Jordan Vawter

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  • Russia recruits Arab fighters with promises, then sends them to Ukraine frontlines

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    BEIRUT — The ad was straightforward: Sign up for one year to fight on Russia’s side in “the special military operation zone” — i.e. the war in Ukraine — and get citizenship, free healthcare, money and land.

    It was one of many promotions cropping up on the messaging platform Telegram beginning in 2024, shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin decreed foreign nationals fighting in the army’s ranks would receive passports for themselves and their families. Since then, travel agencies and brokers have drawn people from all over the world to join what they call Russia’s “elite international battalion,” dangling a raft of benefits to attract would-be recruits.

    For Raed Hammad, a 54-year-old Jordanian man who worked as a cab driver until a herniated disk made sitting in a car seat all day untenable, it seemed like the opportunity he never found in his home country. He contacted a Russian businesswoman, Polina Alexandrovna, whose number was on the Telegram ad, and sent his passport information. In August, he received a visa and flight ticket and flew to Moscow.

    (Other media reports put Alexandrovna’s last name as Azarnykh. It’s unclear if her name is a pseudonym.)

    “As a 54-year-old who was sick, he had a hard time finding employment here in Jordan. When he found this job, and they accepted him with a very attractive salary and benefits, he didn’t think twice,” said Lamees Hammad, his wife, in a tearful video address she posted on social media in September. Because of his age, Lamees Hammad added, her husband assumed he would work as a driver or a cook; she insisted he repeatedly confirmed with Alexandrovna that he wouldn’t serve on the front line.

    “He wanted to provide for our kids, to give them what he couldn’t give them in the past,” Lamees Hammad said. Hammad is a father of four sons, the youngest of whom is 13.

    But days after signing a 17-page army contract that Hammad couldn’t read — he was denied a Russian translator and wasn’t given access to WiFi to translate using his phone, according to his wife — he found himself bunkered in a drone-stalked forward position somewhere in Russian-occupied southeastern Ukraine.

    “He’s facing all kinds of danger … If a rifle is raised in his face, he can’t even run. They’re being treated like livestock over there,” Lamees Hammad said in a recent interview with a Jordanian TV channel, adding that Hammad contacted Alexandrovna and begged to break his contract but was told he would have to pay 500,000 rubles — almost $6,000 — to do so.

    Russian military personnel, draped in Russian flags, appear after a prisoner swap with Ukraine on June 24.

    (Russian Defense Ministry/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    Accurate figures are hard to come by, but it’s clear that Hammad isn’t alone in fighting under Russia’s banner for benefits, with estimates putting the number of foreign fighters in Russian army ranks in the tens of thousands. Many come from disadvantaged countries in the Middle East, Africa and South and East Asia.

    Some 2,000 Iraqis are thought to have enlisted, but press reports indicate thousands joining from Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Jordan. Fighters from Nepal, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cuba and Syria, who in the past came in significant numbers, are no longer allowed to join, according to the Russian defense ministry.

    Foreigners have also served on the opposing side, with Ukrainian officials stating in the past that roughly 20,000 fighters from 50 countries joined Ukraine’s International Legion, including around 3,000 Iraqis.

    In the Russian military, many of the enlisted foreigners came to Russia first as students, but their visas lapsed and they do not want to return home. A significant number also travel to Moscow on tourist visas after they are approved by the military. Once in Russia, they visit offices of companies like Alexandrovna’s and sign a contract with the Russian ministry of defense; others are met by a broker and a Russian officer at the airport.

    Offers vary, but recruits can receive a signing bonus of 1.5 million rubles (around $17,000), and depending on where they fight, get a monthly salary ranging between $2,500 to $3,500 — a life-changing amount in countries like Egypt, where the average salary barely exceeds $300.

    Training lasts four to six weeks and includes language instruction so foreigners can follow basic commands in Russian. They receive citizenship soon after they join, and are given a two-week paid vacation six months into their one-year deployment. If they are killed or wounded, their families can claim the money and citizenship.

    Among the recruitment ads, which appear in Arabic and other languages, Alexandrovna’s channel keeps up a steady rhythm of posts extolling the Russian army’s victories in Ukraine.

    Alexandrovna herself appears in several photos taken with recruits when they first land in Russia; others depict foreign soldiers after they receive their citizenship, smiling to the camera and proudly showing off their passports. Her clients appear to be mostly from the Arab world and parts of Africa.

    “Each of my soldiers is a source of pride,” she writes in one post, saying that they add to the “victory against the neo-Nazis from Ukraine.”

    “Every soldier must proudly and steadfastly defend the new homeland of Russia, because Russia becomes a new homeland for each of them!” she writes.

    Despite the risks, there’s no lack of interest: A look on Alexandrovna’s Telegram channel, titled “Friend of Russia” and featuring a picture of Putin, shows more than 22,000 subscribers. Another channel, run by an Iraqi man who calls himself Bahjat, has almost 30,000.

    Members of a thousands-strong Telegram community group run by an Iraqi with the nickname Abbass the Supporter — who served in the Russian military for three years but now works as a broker and answers questions about deployments on his TikTok channel — participate in chats asking how quickly they can get their visa and travel.

    When contacted by The Times, Alexandrovna denied giving false information to would-be recruits but did not answer detailed questions about Hammad. Nevertheless, it’s unclear how Hammad concluded he would serve in rear positions: Most ads on Alexandrovna’s channel explicitly say foreigners must fight in Ukraine, with no mention of being able to join as a driver or cook, and in any case, those decisions are made by the defense ministry.

    The E-visa form inquires about military experience. Bahjat, who spoke on condition of only giving his first name, said those coming to the Russian army from abroad should expect to go into combat, and that breaking the contract risks imprisonment.

    “What, you think a country is going to give you money and citizenship so you come and cook?” he said in a WhatsApp chat.

    “I’ll give it to you straight. Everyone coming here is going to the frontline and to the war. Anyone saying otherwise is speaking nonsense.”

    The Jordanian ministry did not answer questions about Hammad, but legal experts say governments have little recourse to repatriate their citizens if they signed a contract, unless they can prove they did so under duress.

    Lamees Hammad has been pleading with Jordan’s King Abdullah and government officials to communicate with the Russian foreign ministry and to bring her husband home. But in the meantime, she said, she hoped the Jordanian government would at least block Telegram channels like Alexandrovna’s to prevent others from following in Hammad’s steps.

    “People should know if they do this,” she said, “they’re going to their death.”

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  • Trump asks Supreme Court to uphold restrictions he wants to impose on birthright citizenship

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    President Donald Trump’s administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold his birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.Previous reporting: A legal win for birthright citizenship after Supreme Court setbackThe appeal, shared with The Associated Press on Saturday, sets in motion a process at the high court that could lead to a definitive ruling from the justices by early summer on whether the citizenship restrictions are constitutional.Lower-court judges have so far blocked them from taking effect anywhere. The Republican administration is not asking the court to let the restrictions take effect before it rules.The Justice Department’s petition has been shared with lawyers for parties challenging the order, but is not yet docketed at the Supreme Court.Any decision on whether to take up the case is probably months away, and arguments probably would not take place until the late winter or early spring.“The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”Cody Wofsy, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents children who would be affected by Trump’s restrictions, said the administration’s plan is plainly unconstitutional.“This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that. We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order,” Wofsy said in an email.Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term in the White House that would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.The administration is appealing two cases.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

    WASHINGTON —

    President Donald Trump’s administration is asking the Supreme Court to uphold his birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

    Previous reporting: A legal win for birthright citizenship after Supreme Court setback

    The appeal, shared with The Associated Press on Saturday, sets in motion a process at the high court that could lead to a definitive ruling from the justices by early summer on whether the citizenship restrictions are constitutional.

    Lower-court judges have so far blocked them from taking effect anywhere. The Republican administration is not asking the court to let the restrictions take effect before it rules.

    The Justice Department’s petition has been shared with lawyers for parties challenging the order, but is not yet docketed at the Supreme Court.

    Any decision on whether to take up the case is probably months away, and arguments probably would not take place until the late winter or early spring.

    “The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”

    Cody Wofsy, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents children who would be affected by Trump’s restrictions, said the administration’s plan is plainly unconstitutional.

    “This executive order is illegal, full stop, and no amount of maneuvering from the administration is going to change that. We will continue to ensure that no baby’s citizenship is ever stripped away by this cruel and senseless order,” Wofsy said in an email.

    Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term in the White House that would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

    In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.

    While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.

    But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.

    The administration is appealing two cases.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.

    Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.

    Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.

    The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

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  • Here’s how Trump is changing the H-1B visa program

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    Here’s how Trump is changing the H-1B visa program

    The Trump administration is overhauling a visa program intended for high-skilled workers by hiking the application fee to $100,000 annually.

    Updated: 5:11 AM PDT Sep 20, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    President Donald Trump is overhauling a visa program intended for high-skilled workers by hiking the application fee to $100,000 annually from $215. It’s the latest step from the Trump administration aimed at limiting legal immigration. The move could shake up hiring strategies in major industries like technology, finance, health care and higher education. The H-1B visa program aims to bring in foreign workers for high-skilled, hard-to-fill jobs. Historically, these visas have been awarded through a lottery system. Opponents argue that businesses are abusing the program to pay overseas workers lower wages. At a press conference on Friday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the steeper application fee will incentivize companies to hire Americans instead. He predicted program usage will ultimately fall below the current 85,000 annual cap as a result. “Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs,” Lutnick said. This year, top recipients of H-1B visas included Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Google.In the past, debates over the future of the program have divided members of Trump’s coalition. Some have called for lower caps or eliminating H-1B visas entirely. Big Tech allies, like billionaire Elon Musk (a former H-1B recipient), contend the program plays a critical role in keeping American businesses competitive by attracting top talent from around the world.”The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk posted in December during a social media spat on this topic. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.” Also on Friday, Trump rolled out a new visa pathway that he’s calling the “Trump Gold Card.” It allows vetted individuals to pay $1 million in exchange for an expedited process and a pathway to lawful permanent resident status, according to the program’s website. Corporations sponsoring individuals would have to pay $2 million. “It’s going to raise billions of dollars, billions and billions of dollars, which is going to reduce taxes, pay off debt, and other good things,” Trump said. Critics argue that Trump can’t take these steps without approval from Congress. The plan is expected to face legal challenges.

    WASHINGTON —

    President Donald Trump is overhauling a visa program intended for high-skilled workers by hiking the application fee to $100,000 annually from $215.

    It’s the latest step from the Trump administration aimed at limiting legal immigration. The move could shake up hiring strategies in major industries like technology, finance, health care and higher education.

    The H-1B visa program aims to bring in foreign workers for high-skilled, hard-to-fill jobs. Historically, these visas have been awarded through a lottery system.

    Opponents argue that businesses are abusing the program to pay overseas workers lower wages. At a press conference on Friday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the steeper application fee will incentivize companies to hire Americans instead. He predicted program usage will ultimately fall below the current 85,000 annual cap as a result.

    “Train Americans. Stop bringing in people to take our jobs,” Lutnick said.

    This year, top recipients of H-1B visas included Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Google.

    In the past, debates over the future of the program have divided members of Trump’s coalition. Some have called for lower caps or eliminating H-1B visas entirely. Big Tech allies, like billionaire Elon Musk (a former H-1B recipient), contend the program plays a critical role in keeping American businesses competitive by attracting top talent from around the world.

    “The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk posted in December during a social media spat on this topic. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”

    Also on Friday, Trump rolled out a new visa pathway that he’s calling the “Trump Gold Card.” It allows vetted individuals to pay $1 million in exchange for an expedited process and a pathway to lawful permanent resident status, according to the program’s website. Corporations sponsoring individuals would have to pay $2 million.

    “It’s going to raise billions of dollars, billions and billions of dollars, which is going to reduce taxes, pay off debt, and other good things,” Trump said.

    Critics argue that Trump can’t take these steps without approval from Congress. The plan is expected to face legal challenges.

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  • No, Obama didn’t remove census citizenship question

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    Before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed James Uthmeier, his former chief of staff, as attorney general, Uthmeier worked in the first Trump administration in the Department of Commerce, which oversees the U.S. Census Bureau.

    Now Uthmeier’s past is present after President Donald Trump called for a rare, mid-decade census to exclude immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

    “During my time working in the first Trump Admin, the Supreme Ct (5-4 decision) blocked us from asking in the Census whether someone is a U.S. citizen (though it was asked for over 150 years, prior to Obama admin),” Uthmeier posted Aug. 24 on X. “Illegals shouldn’t be included in apportionment.” 

    Apportionment is how the federal government determines how many seats each state receives in the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s based on population figures reported in the census, including people who are not U.S. citizens.

    Uthmeier is right that the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump’s 2019 attempt to add a citizenship question in the 2020 census. But he’s wrong that the census asked the question for 150 years before President Barack Obama came along.

    The 2010 census broke from tradition, but the change was in the works before Obama took office, and the Census Bureau continues to ask about citizenship in an annual survey.

    “The Obama administration did not change the census question related to citizenship,” said Terri Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer and census expert. Instead, the question was  included in the annual American Community Survey, which replaced a long-form census questionnaire. Not everyone who received a census form received the question.  

    Joining other states jockeying for congressional seats ahead of the 2026 midterms, Florida Republican legislators convened a select committee on congressional redistricting to look at the state’s map.

    Sign up for PolitiFact texts

    PolitiFact contacted Uthmeier’s office for comment but did not hear back by publication.

    What’s the history of census citizenship questions?

    Uthmeier said a citizenship question was asked in the census “for over 150 years,” but it has not been part of the decennial census for all U.S. households that entire time.  

    The earliest U.S. census in 1790 asked for the head of the family’s name and number of people in the household, including enslaved people.

    The first version of a census citizenship question appeared in 1820, asking each household “the number of foreigners not naturalized.” Until 1920, it was asked only of adult men — women and children automatically had the same citizenship status as their husbands or fathers.

    Some form of the citizenship question has been included as a general question every decade since 1890 (but not asked of all households), with the exception of 1960, which focused on place of birth.

    The last time the Census Bureau came close to asking every household about citizenship status was in 1950, when census workers knocked on doors and interviewed residents. They asked where each person was born and, in a follow-up question for those born outside the U.S., asked if they were a naturalized citizen.

    In 1970, the Census Bureau started distributing two different questionnaires: a short form sent to most households and a long form sent to about 1 in 6 households. Only the long version asked about citizenship. 

    In 2000, for example, the long-form questionnaire asked respondents, “Is this person a CITIZEN of the United States?” 

    The short form asked for the basics, such as name, date of birth, sex and race. It continued not to ask about citizenship in 1980, 1990 and 2000.

    What happened under Obama?

    In 2010, the census eliminated the long-form questionnaire in favor of a 10-question short-form questionnaire that didn’t ask about citizenship.

    The census bureau had started collecting demographic and socioeconomic information through an alternative questionnaire — the American Community Survey, or ACS, in 2005. The annual survey is sent to about 3.5 million households and continues to ask about citizenship, among other topics.

    Plans to stop using the long-form census started years before Obama took office, during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

    “To deal with some of these challenges at the beginning of the decade, the 2010 census was re-engineered to build a better, faster and simpler census. The plan was to leverage technology, eliminate the long form and conduct a short-form-only decennial census,” Carlos Gutierrez, the commerce secretary under Bush, testified to Congress in 2008, according to The New York Times.

    Several government reports from the early 2000s concluded that the American Community Survey produced the same estimates as the long-form census.

    “The ACS includes a question on citizenship, as the long-form did. Therefore, President Obama did not change the content of the 2010 Census,” Lowenthal said. “Besides, Obama did not take office until 2009 — too late to change the content of the census without risking significant adverse consequences for census operations and, therefore, accuracy.”

    The questions on the decennial census “have never been political until now,” said Misty Lee Heggeness, a University of Kansas associate professor and former U.S. Census Bureau economist. “Changes made to previous census forms had to do with innovations related to survey implementation and data collection and costs.”

    Census directors appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents have previously agreed that a question on citizenship would discourage responses and undermine census accuracy. Heggeness co-authored a March 2025 peer-reviewed study that supports that perspective.

    Heggeness said the point of the census is to get an accurate count “of all the people in the United States’ borders,” as mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

    “It’s about getting as many people as possible to respond because an undercount can cause a lot of complications in the following decade,” she said.

    Our ruling

    Uthmeier said citizenship status was asked in the U.S. Census “for over 150 years” prior to the Obama administration.

    The last time the decennial census came close to asking every household about citizenship status was in 1950, when it was a follow-up question for foreign-born respondents. Subsequent censuses have asked the question only of a sample of households.

    In 2010, the Census Bureau took the citizenship question out of the long-form questionnaire as part of changes planned under the Bush administration. The Census Bureau still asks the question of 3.5 million households each year through the American Community Survey.

    We rate this claim False.

    PolitiFact Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. 

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  • Future of citizenship applications, USCIS reinstates decades-old policy to vet immigrants

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    The landscape around immigration is shifting again under the Trump administration.Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released a memo bringing back “neighborhood investigations,” a method once used to evaluate an immigrant’s moral character. The practice dates back to the 1980s and was discontinued in 1991.See the report in the video aboveNow, immigration attorneys are working to understand what its return could mean for their clients.”It’s not well-defined, like, what the discretion is,” said Brian Blackford, an immigration attorney in Omaha, Nebraska. “Even with this policy memo, we don’t exactly know all the considerations.”According to the USCIS memo, investigators are permitted to talk with people living near an applicant’s residence and place of employment. Blackford said that raises concerns.”Is that going to result in them being denied citizenship because a neighbor doesn’t like them? We don’t know, like, what this entails,” Blackford said.The memo states the practice is meant to improve background checks during citizenship applications. Blackford said it is something he has never seen in his decades-long career.”They would do that to make sure there’s no marriage fraud, but that would be the extent of USCIS investigators looking into somebody that has a pending application before the agency,” he said.The agency memo said neighborhood investigations began in 1981 to better determine a person’s moral character and eligibility for citizenship. The practice stopped in 1991.”They just made the decision to stop doing that and to instead just go off of people’s biometrics, and run their background that way to make the process more streamlined,” Blackford said.Blackford said reinstating the practice could discourage immigrants from applying.”This can have some really chilling effects on speech and on applying for citizenship altogether,” he said.He added that the policy is impacting immigrants seeking status through legal means.”These are people that have been lawful permanent residents for either 3 or 5 years minimum,” Blackford said. In a statement to KETV, USCIS said the agency is ensuring “aliens are being properly vetted” and added the directive will “enhance these statutorily required investigations.”

    The landscape around immigration is shifting again under the Trump administration.

    Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released a memo bringing back “neighborhood investigations,” a method once used to evaluate an immigrant’s moral character. The practice dates back to the 1980s and was discontinued in 1991.

    See the report in the video above

    Now, immigration attorneys are working to understand what its return could mean for their clients.

    “It’s not well-defined, like, what the discretion is,” said Brian Blackford, an immigration attorney in Omaha, Nebraska. “Even with this policy memo, we don’t exactly know all the considerations.”

    According to the USCIS memo, investigators are permitted to talk with people living near an applicant’s residence and place of employment. Blackford said that raises concerns.

    “Is that going to result in them being denied citizenship because a neighbor doesn’t like them? We don’t know, like, what this entails,” Blackford said.

    The memo states the practice is meant to improve background checks during citizenship applications. Blackford said it is something he has never seen in his decades-long career.

    “They would do that to make sure there’s no marriage fraud, but that would be the extent of USCIS investigators looking into somebody that has a pending application before the agency,” he said.

    The agency memo said neighborhood investigations began in 1981 to better determine a person’s moral character and eligibility for citizenship. The practice stopped in 1991.

    “They just made the decision to stop doing that and to instead just go off of people’s biometrics, and run their background that way to make the process more streamlined,” Blackford said.

    Blackford said reinstating the practice could discourage immigrants from applying.

    “This can have some really chilling effects on speech and on applying for citizenship altogether,” he said.

    He added that the policy is impacting immigrants seeking status through legal means.

    “These are people that have been lawful permanent residents for either 3 or 5 years minimum,” Blackford said.

    In a statement to KETV, USCIS said the agency is ensuring “aliens are being properly vetted” and added the directive will “enhance these statutorily required investigations.”

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  • Immigrants seeking lawful work and citizenship are now subject to ‘anti-Americanism’ screening

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    By COREY WILLIAMS and VALERIE GONZALEZ

    Immigrants seeking a legal pathway to live and work in the United States will now be subject to screening for “anti-Americanism’,” authorities said Tuesday, raising concerns among critics that it gives officers too much leeway in rejecting foreigners based on a subjective judgment.

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    The Associated Press

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  • Surge in Americans Giving Up Citizenship, Reports Bambridge Accountants New York

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    NEW YORK, March 7, 2025 (Newswire.com)
    –
    There has been a surge in Americans giving up citizenship, according to research by the international tax firm, Bambridge Accountants New York.

    • 4,819 Americans gave up their citizenship in 2024.

    • Showing a 48% increase on 2023, where only 3,260 cases were recorded.

    • There was a rush of 2,123 expatriations in the 3 months leading up to the election in November 2024 – the highest number reported for 4 and a half years.

    • The swell mirrors the same increase in expatriations when US President Donald Trump won the election in 2016.

    The U.S. Department of State estimates there are 9 million U.S. expats. Over the last 4 years there have been fairly constant levels of Americans renouncing – the three months leading up to the 2024 election has shown a significant increase in the number of Americans overseas giving up their citizenship.

    Every quarter, the U.S. Government publishes the names of all Americans who give up their citizenship, including Green Card holders who give back the Green Card after 8 or more years.

    Alistair Bambridge, partner at Bambridge Accountants New York, explains: “There has been a tremendous interest leading up to the election in 2024 and for the first few months of 2025 for Americans overseas looking to renounce their citizenship. While President Biden was in power, we were seeing less interest and the figures reported by the U.S. Treasury reflect this.

    “We speak to U.S. citizens on a daily basis who are looking to renounce their citizenship. There is an uptick in queries from Americans looking to give back their passport, the common thread is the political situation in the U.S.

    “U.S. citizens living overseas, are required to file U.S. tax returns each year, declaring worldwide income and report all their foreign bank accounts, investments and pensions held outside the U.S. For some Americans, it is not political and this financial reporting is too much, and they decide to renounce their citizenship as they have no plans to return to live in the U.S.

    “From our experience, of the queries we receive now, about 60% of Americans who want to give back their passport are politically motivated and the remaining 40% are for financial reasons. While President Biden was in office, the reason quoted for renouncing, 90% plus, was financial.

    Bambridge Accountants New York is a New York-based firm specializing in U.S. expat tax, U.K expats, foreign companies with U.S. reporting (1120-F).

    www.bambridgeaccountants.com

    Contact Information

    Alistair Bambridge
    Partner
    alistair@bambridgeaccountants.com

    Source: Bambridge Accountants New York

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  • Think you know American government? Try Florida’s civic literacy test

    Think you know American government? Try Florida’s civic literacy test

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    “Whose philosophic principles inspired the Declaration of Independence?”

    “Which form of government is based on popular sovereignty?”

    “Which legislation reflects federal efforts to regulate transportation?”

    July 4 is always a fine time to double-check how much you know about how the U.S. government works.

    According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 878,500 people became U.S. citizens in fiscal year 2023. Part of that process is taking a civics test. During the naturalization interview, a USCIS officer chooses 10 questions from a list of 100, and the applicant has to get six correct to pass.

    The questions are said in English, and there is NO MULTIPLE CHOICE. But the practice test on the USCIS website is multiple choice, it consists of 20 randomized questions and anyone can try their hand at it online.

    [RELATED: ‘You will never forget this day,’ 20 immigrants become American citizens on July 4]

    But Florida has its own government test, and it may be harder: the Florida Civic Literacy Exam.

    In 2021, the Florida Legislature required all students taking a U.S. government course in public high schools to take the FCLE.

    The test consists of 80 multiple-choice questions and is taken on a computer. The test is about understanding the U.S. Constitution and its application, knowing the founding documents, and understanding landmark laws, Supreme Court cases and their impact on society.

    To pass, you need to get 60% of the questions right.

    Do you think you can pass?

    Below is a 40-question practice test that’s put out by the Florida Department of Education. As you go through the questions, be sure to write your answers down and check them against the answer key at the end.

    Tell us how you did and what you think of the tests in the comments below.

    You can listen to every episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate in the media player below:

    Copyright 2024 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.

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    Christie Zizo

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  • DC recruiting firm accused of pretending to be visa sponsor shuts down, AG’s office says – WTOP News

    DC recruiting firm accused of pretending to be visa sponsor shuts down, AG’s office says – WTOP News

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    A teachers recruiting firm in D.C. accused of charging high fees and falsely claiming to be an official visa sponsor has been shut down.

    A recruiting firm accused of charging high fees and falsely claiming to be an official visa sponsor has been shut down, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a news release Thursday.

    Earl Francisco Lopez and the teacher recruitment companies he ran, including the Bilingual Teacher Exchange, are accused of “preying upon dozens of foreign exchange program teachers” by lying about affiliation with the U.S. State Department, Schwalb’s office said.

    Lopez traveled to Honduras, Colombia and other Central or South American countries to recruit teachers, said Wendy Weinberg, senior assistant attorney general in the D.C. Office of the Attorney General. He told them, Weinberg said, that he could help them get visas and could offer support services once they got to the U.S.

    However, Lopez wasn’t the visa sponsor. Instead, Weinberg said, he worked with a company that served as the actual visa sponsor. He recruited over 60 teachers to work in D.C. public or public charter schools. They accused him of failing to provide the services he promised that he would.

    The teachers approached Schwalb’s office with their concerns when they learned that Lopez wasn’t actually their visa sponsor and when they figured out he couldn’t deport them or have them fired, which he’s accused of threatening to do, Weinberg said.

    “Being trapped in an elaborate scam — and discovering that you’ve fallen victim to labor trafficking — is gut-wrenching and shakes you to your core,” said Dulce Maria Nuñez Zaldivar, a middle school teacher who is originally from Honduras, in a statement. “When I learned that Mr. Lopez had manipulated and exploited me and so many others for his own gain, the fear was suffocating. I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare with no escape.”

    Lopez charged most of the teachers about $6,500 for the first year, $5,000 for the second year and $3,700 for the third year, Weinberg said.

    The teachers were recruited to participate in a three-year State Department exchange program. The actual visa sponsor offering the same services was charging $1,500 per year, Weinberg said.

    “He was charging people these high fees, which many of the teachers had trouble paying,” Weinberg said. “They were obviously surviving on teacher salaries, and many had to borrow money in order to come over here. When people didn’t pay, he threatened them with deportation, he threatened them with losing their jobs and was charging late fees that were illegal under D.C. law.”

    Lopez is also accused of failing to help the teachers get housing and set up with Social Security numbers and required vaccines. The classroom trainings “were not appropriate” for experienced teachers who knew the fundamentals of classroom management, Weinberg said.

    Lopez is also accused of telling teachers they could only work in D.C. schools if they signed contracts with his companies, such as Bilingual Teacher Exchange, Ives Hall Consulting, Inc. and Bert Corona Leadership Institute, Inc.

    As part of a settlement agreement, Schwalb’s office said Lopez’s recruitment firm is permanently shutting down. The teachers will receive restitution, and Weinberg said the attorney general’s office will “be monitoring his activities and looking at his contracts with consumers. If he violated any of the terms of the agreement, he is subject to having to pay the District $1 million.”

    Weinberg recommends that anyone working with a person claiming to be a legitimate visa sponsor visit the State Department’s website, which has a list of authorized sponsors.

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  • Melania Trump Delivers Powerful Speech About Becoming An American Citizen

    Melania Trump Delivers Powerful Speech About Becoming An American Citizen

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    The former First Lady Melania Trump made a rare public appearance on Friday, delivering a powerful speech about becoming an American citizen.

    Melania Gives Rare Speech

    While speaking to 25 newly naturalized citizens at the National Archives Naturalization Ceremony in Washington D.C. on Friday, Melania said that the path to becoming a U.S. citizen is “arduous.” Melania, who was born in Slovenia, recalled that she felt a “tremendous sense of pride and belonging” when she became an American citizen in 2006.

    “For me, reaching the milestone of American citizenship marked the sunrise of certainty,” she said, according to The Hill. “At that exact moment, I forever discarded the layer of burden connected with whether I would be able to live in the United States. I hope you’re blanketed with similar feelings of comfort right now.”

    After being born and raised in Slovenia, Melania moved to New York City to model back in 1996, and she immediately fell in love with this country and everything it has to offer. She started researching and visiting embassies “with a goal of securing a worker visa,” but she quickly found the immigration process to be challenging.

    “My personal experience of traversing the challenges of the immigration process opened my eyes to the harsh realities these people face, including you, who try to become U.S. citizens,” she said.

    Related: Trump and Melania Reportedly ‘Just Sick’ Over January 6 Defendants, Would Issue Pardons

    Melania Becomes A Citizen

    While Melania was “devoted” to the process, she admitted that she was “certainly was not an attorney,” so she considered herself “fortunate” to have the opportunity to receive legal counsel. In 2001, Melania was able to receive a green card through the elite EB-1 program, nicknamed the “Einstein visa,” which is for people with “extraordinary ability.”

    Melania concluded her speech by applauding the 25 new American citizens as she stood next to the Declaration of Independence.

    “Becoming an American citizen comes with responsibility, it means actively participating in the democratic process and guarding our freedom,” she told them. “It also means leading by example and contributing to our society. It is a life altering experience that takes time, determination and sometimes, even tremendous strength.”

    Related: WATCH: Melania Trump Tears Into Biden Presidency – ‘Sad to See People Struggling and Suffering’

    Melania Supporting Her Husband In 2024

    Melania previously told Fox News that she supports her husband Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, saying that she is looking forward to “restoring hope for the future and leading America with love and strength” if she makes it to the White House once again in 2024.

    If she does have the “the privilege” to be First Lady for a second time, Melania plans to once again focus on children in her quest to ensure that they have the “support and resources they need to reach their full potential.”

    Back in September, Donald told NBC News that Melania would be on the campaign trail with him “pretty soon.”

    “She’s a private person, a great person, a very confident person and she loves our country very much,” he said at the time. “And honestly, I like to keep her away from it. It’s so nasty and so mean.”

    Melania was a truly incredible First Lady, and there are millions of Americanas who would love to see her back in the White House. What do you think about the speech that she gave today? Let us know in the comments section.

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  • Deal ‘with the devil’: Meet the Cubans who’ve joined Russia’s war on Ukraine

    Deal ‘with the devil’: Meet the Cubans who’ve joined Russia’s war on Ukraine

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    What César really wanted was to get out of Cuba. A bartender struggling to make ends meet in Havana, he tried last year to reach Miami in a rickety boat but was forced to abandon the attempt when he was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard.

    He’s now preparing a second escape attempt: with a direct flight to Moscow. His ticket has been paid for by a Russian recruiter but it comes with a hefty price tag nonetheless: As part of the deal, he will have to join the Russian army and fight in Ukraine.

    “If this is the sacrifice I have to make for my family to get ahead, I’ll do it,”  said César, who turned 19 this year and whose name has been changed to protect his identity.

    “You can be a nuclear physicist and still die of hunger here,” he said. “With my current salary I can barely buy basic things like toilet paper or milk.” He said he hoped he would be allowed to work as a paramedic.

    The news of Cuban fighters in Ukraine splashed across global headlines earlier this month when Havana announced it had arrested 17 people for involvement in a human trafficking ring recruiting young men to fight for Russia.

    The news raised questions about the extent of cooperation between the two Cold War allies, and whether cracks were beginning to show in Havana’s support for Russia’s invasion.

    Conversations with Cubans in Cuba and Russia reveal a different side of the story: of desperate young men who see enlistment in the Russian army as their best shot at a better life — even if not all of them seem to know what they were getting themselves into.

    One recruit in his late 40s in the Russian city of Tula, whom we will call Pedro, said he was promised a job as a driver “for workers and construction material” but on arrival in Russia was being prepared for combat, weapon in hand.

    “We signed a contract with the devil,” he said, recalling the moment he enlisted. “And the devil does not hand out sweets.”

    Cold-war allies

    Until recently, Havana — though formally neutral on Ukraine — made no secret of siding with Moscow in what it called its clash with the “Yankee empire.” The Castro regime is dependent on Russia for cheap fuel and other aid. But unlike, say, North Korea, it has little to offer in return other than diplomatic loyalty.

    Since the Kremlin launched its full-scale assault last year, the countries have exchanged visits by top brass.

    Critics have warned that, keeping with Soviet tradition, Cuba could send troops to help fight Moscow’s cause. They point to a May visit to Belarus by Cuba’s military attaché, where the “training of Cuban military personnel” was top of the agenda, and a trip to Moscow by Cuba’s defense minister several weeks later to discuss “a number of technical military projects.” But there has been no evidence of direct involvement.

    Havana’s crackdown on the recruitment network followed the publication of an interview on YouTube in late August, in which two 19-year-old Cubans claimed they had been lured to Russia for lucrative construction jobs, only to be sent to the trenches in Ukraine. They said they had suffered beatings, been scammed out of their money and were being kept captive.

    Cuba’s foreign ministry vowed to act “energetically” against efforts to entice Cubans to join Russia’s war effort, adding: “Cuba is not part of the conflict in Ukraine.”

    The change in tone in Havana suggests that the recruitment of Cubans through informal backchannels has “hit a nerve,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House. 

    “Cuba and the Soviet Union fought side by side in Angola and other places, but for ideological reasons,” he said. “Now it’s boiled down to the ugliest, most mercenary terms, giving it a transactional quality that goes against decades of friendship.”

    In November 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree offering fast-tracked naturalization to foreigners who signed up as contract soldiers. “We are all getting Russian citizenship,” one recruit texted this reporter. That week, he and others told POLITICO, some 15 recruits, some of whom had been in Russia for only a couple of months, had been personally handed their passports by the local governor.

    With heavy losses in Ukraine, Russia “needs the cannon fodder,” said Pavel Luzin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He added most foreign recruits come from Central Asian and African countries, Syria and Afghanistan.

    It is unclear exactly how many foreign citizens have joined Russia’s ranks. But Luzin says their limited numbers mainly serve to boost Russia’s narrative that it has international support for its war.

    “Without speaking the language, knowing the local terrain, or the right training for modern warfare, they’ll be swiftly killed and that’s it,” he said. 

    Joining the 106th

    For most of the Cubans with whom POLITICO spoke, their involvement with the Russian army began in late 2022, when somebody using the name Elena Shuvalova began posting on social media pages targeting Cubans looking to go abroad or already in Russia.

    One post showed a woman in a long skirt in front of a car decorated with a Cuban flag and a “Z,” Russia’s pro-war symbol. In the accompanying text, Shuvalova offered a one-year contract with the Russian army, “help” with the required language exams and medical tests, and “express legalization within two days.”

    Pay consisted of a one-off handout of 195,000 rubles (about $2,000) followed by a monthly salary of 204,000 rubles ($2,100). By comparison, Cuba’s average GDP per capita in 2020 was $9,500 per year. 

    Of the four recruits currently in Russia who shared their stories with POLITICO, three said they had been flown in from Cuba this summer. At home, they worked in hospitality, teaching and construction. One said he had a professional military background. Two others had completed two years of standard compulsory military service.

    While they knew they would be employed by Russia’s military, they were reassured that they would be working far from the front line as drivers or construction workers. “To dig fortifications or help rebuild cities,” one recruit’s exasperated wife told POLITICO.

    Because they could face charges of joining a mercenary group in Cuba or of treason or espionage in Russia for talking to a reporter, POLITICO changed the names of the recruits quoted in this story.

    Each of them said they were flown in from Varadero along with several dozen other men. They said their passports were not stamped on departure, and that upon entering Russia their migration cards were marked “tourism” as their purpose of stay.

    On landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, the recruits were met by a woman who introduced herself as Diana, who said she was a Cuban with Russian ties. They were then loaded onto a bus and brought to what one recruit described as “an empty school building” near Ryazan, a city in western Russia 200 kilometers southeast of Moscow. 

    There, they underwent a cursory medical check and were subject to a mountain of red tape, including the signing of a contract with the Russian defense ministry. One recruit said a Spanish version of the text was made available to those who specifically requested it, but others said that a translator simply summarized its content verbally.

    The recruits said that some of the new arrivals remained behind at a military unit in Ryazan. But most were transferred to the 106th Guards Airborne, a division based in the city of Tula near Moscow that has been deployed into some of the fiercest fighting in Ukraine.

    Kyiv claims the 106th was largely “reduced to fertilizer” in the early days of the invasion when it tried to capture Kyiv. In recent months, it has been stationed around Soledar and Bakhmut, hotspots in eastern Ukraine.

    “When they handed us the uniform and told us to go train I realized this was not about construction at all,” one recruit said. By then, however, he was locked in.

    A legal adviser who is well-known within Russia’s Cuban community told POLITICO he has delivered the same tough message to scores of Cuban recruits who have appealed to him for help: “Once you’ve signed the contract, defecting is tantamount to treason.” 

    When POLITICO spoke to Pedro in Tula, he said he felt trapped by his decision. 

    “I came here to give my children a better life, not to kill,” he said, breaking down into tears. “I won’t fire a single bullet.” 

    He added he had considered trying to escape. “But where do I go?”

    On landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, the recruits were met by a woman who introduced herself as Diana, who said she was a Cuban with Russian ties | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images

    Willing participants

    POLITICO could not determine whether Shuvalova or Diana were working for Russian or Cuban authorities. Neither woman responded to requests for comment — though Shuvalova told journalists at the Russian-language Moscow Times that she worked pro-bono.

    While the Cuban Embassy in Moscow did not respond to multiple requests for comment, the government itself has sent mixed messages. Shortly after Cuba’s announcement that it had broken up the human trafficking ring, Havana’s ambassador to Moscow told the state-run RIA agency that “we have nothing against Cubans who just want to sign a contract and legally take part in this operation.”

    Russia’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

    It’s not easy to tell just how many Cuban citizens have joined the Russian military.

    In conversations with POLITICO, the recruits said roughly 140 Cubans were currently in Tula. And a caller to a Miami-based Spanish-language television channel in early September said that he had some 90 Cubans under his command in Ryazan.

    A trove of 198 hacked documents, allegedly belonging to recent Cuban recruits and published online by the Ukrainian website Informnapalm, showed the ages of those who joined the Russian army ranged between 19 to 69 years old. More than 50 of the passports were issued in June and July this year.

    Not all Cubans POLITICO spoke to said they had been tricked into joining the war. In photos shared online and in messenger apps, many pose proudly in military gear, some carrying weapons. 

    “No one put a gun to their heads,” Yoenni Vega Gonzalez, 36, a Cuban migrant in Russia, said of his acquaintances in Ukraine. “The contract makes it clear that you’re going to war, not to play ball or camping.”

    He said he had been refused the opportunity to join because he does not speak Russian. “Otherwise, I would have gone [to the front] with pride and my head held high.”

    During the reporting of this article, several Cubans still on the island reached out saying they wanted to enlist. All cited economic, and not political, reasons as their core motivation.

    Accounts of daily life behind the fences of the training sites differed greatly.

    Some recruits described their interaction with the Russians as friendly and the atmosphere as relaxed. In their free time they smoked cigarettes and sipped on Coca-Cola (officially not available in either Cuba or Russia). On the weekends they went sightseeing and reveled in the city’s bars.

    But those who say they were tricked into service, seemingly a minority, complain about payment delays and said they are threatened with incarceration for resisting orders.

    When asked about the moral implications of his decision, one recruit in Tula said it wasn’t his primary concern.

    “This is the way we found to get out of Cuba,” he said. “No one here wants to kill anyone. But neither do we want to die ourselves.”

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  • Moscow attacks Ukraine port day before Russia-Turkey talks on grain deal

    Moscow attacks Ukraine port day before Russia-Turkey talks on grain deal

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    Moscow launched a barrage of drone attacks early Sunday at a port in Ukraine’s Odesa region used by Kyiv to export grain, a day ahead of talks between Russia and Turkey where reviving a U.N.-backed grain deal will be high on the agenda.

    Kyiv’s air defenses shot down 22 out of the 25 Iranian-made drones destined for the Danube River port infrastructure, Ukraine’s air force said on Telegram on Sunday. At least two people were reported injured.

    The Danube River has become Ukraine’s main route for shipping grain after a deal brokered by Turkey and the U.N. allowing Kyiv to use the Black Sea for exports collapsed in July. Moscow has stepped up its attacks of Danube port infrastructure in recent weeks.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Russia on Monday, where Turkey is expected to push for the restoration of the Black Sea grain deal.

    “Russian terrorists continue to attack port infrastructure in the hope of provoking a food crisis and famine in the world,” said Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, on Telegram following the Russian attack.

    Ukrainian officials also said Russian shelling had injured four people in the country’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region Sunday morning, while one person had died after attacks on Saturday in the country’s northeastern Sumy region. POLITICO couldn’t independently verify the reports.

    That also comes after a top Ukrainian general leading the country’s counteroffensive said on Saturday that Kyiv’s troops had breached Russia’s first defensive line near Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine after weeks of mine clearance.

    In a sign that Russia is also increasingly looking at all possible options to shore up its forces, Moscow has been appealing for fresh recruits through advertizing in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday. Online adverts offering up to €4,756 in initial salaries have been spotted Armenia and Kazakshtan, as well as schemes offering fast-track Russian citizenship for those who sign up.

    Around 280,000 people have signed up for military service in Russia so far this year, the country’s former President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday. Last year, Russia announced a plan of increasing its troops by 30 percent to 1.5 million.

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    Victor Jack

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