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Tag: denaturalization

  • Feds say former North Miami mayor lived a 30-year lie, move to strip him of citizenship

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    Former North Miami Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime

    Former North Miami Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime


    Sydney Walsh

    swalsh@miamiherald.com

    From the moment Philippe Bien-Aime stepped foot in the United States on July 25, 1995, immigration authorities, say the Haitian native has been living a lie.

    The former mayor of North Miami arrived in the U.S. with his photo on someone else’s passport, authorities say in a federal lawsuit seeking to strip Bien-Aime of his citizenship. As part of his naturalization process, they add, Bien-Aime, 60, has lied about who and how many women he’s married and divorced and also about how many children he has had with them.

    READ MORE: Feds move to strip U.S. citizenship from Haiti-born former mayor of North Miami

    He used his original name, Jean Philippe Janvier, in a 2000 deportation case in which a U.S. immigration judge ordered his return to Haiti — though he never moved back to his country. Instead, he used a new name, Philippe Bien-Aime, on a naturalization application in 2005 after he married a U.S. citizen. He also used that name when he won the mayoral election in North Miami in 2019, after six years on the city council.

    An immigration officer said in an affidavit filed in federal court in Miami this week that as part of the naturalization process, “Bien-Aime was not eligible to receive a visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen because his marriage to the U.S. citizen … was bigamous and invalid” – pointing out that he lied about being divorced from his Haitian wife. “Bien-Aime was not legally free to marry” the U.S. citizen or allowed to attain an immigration benefit through a “bigamous marriage,” the officer said in the affidavit supporting the federal lawsuit.

    Two simultaneous weddings

    Adding to the intrigue are court documents that say that, under the name Jean Philippe Janvier, he married Sarahjane Ternier, and under the name Philippe Bien-Aime, he married Beatrice Gelin — both on the same date, June 20, 1993, in Port-au-Prince.

    A U.S. immigration summary of Haitian government records show that the marriage and divorce certificates for Janvier and Ternier were found to be fraudulent. Meanwhile, the Haitian divorce records for Bien-Aime and Gelin were also found to be fraudulent. The immigration summary, however, states that a marriage certificate for Bien-Aime and Gelin was found in Haiti’s National Archives but does not comment on whether it’s valid or invalid.

    Court records show Bien-Aime asserted throughout his applications for a green card and for naturalization that he divorced Gelin on Dec. 30, 1999, and married Marie Rose Chauvet, a U.S. citizen, on May 30, 2001. Bien-Aime attained U.S. citizenship on Sept. 22, 2006.

    The federal suit seeking his denaturalization accuses Bien-Aime of falsely telling authorities that “he has not practiced polygamy and has not given any false testimony to obtain immigration benefits.”

    The decades of alleged deceptions and misrepresentations are at the heart of the federal government’s efforts to strip Bien-Aime of his American citizenship. The case is part of a larger, aggressive Trump administration campaign to catch immigrants who fraudulently obtain U.S. citizenship. The Department of Justice last year ordered its civil division to prioritize denaturalization, cases that have previously been rarely pursued.

    “United States citizenship is a privilege grounded in honesty and allegiance to this country,” Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said in a statement. “The fact that he later served as an elected mayor makes the alleged deception even more serious, because public office carries a duty of candor and respect for the rule of law.”

    Facing deportation

    Should U.S. authorities succeed in revoking his citizenship, Bien-Aime is facing deportation to native Haiti, a country in the throes of violence and instability.

    U.S. officials were investigating the fraudulent marriage and divorce documents as early as August 2019, during President Donald Trump’s first term, according to an overseas verification report that also lists both the Bien-Aime and the Janvier monikers. That was two months after Port-au-Prince-born Bien-Aime had been elected mayor of North Miami. Neither the first Trump administration nor the subsequent Biden administration pursued legal action against him.

    To back up their allegations, the federal government provides a July 1965 certificate registering the birth of Jean Philippe Janvier; immigration applications where Bien-Aime does not list he had other names or mention one of his purported wives in Haiti and the children she bore him in the United States; a divorce certificate to the other woman in Haiti that they say is fraudulent; and his original deportation order from the early 2000s.

    On a phone call Thursday, Bien-Aime declined to comment and referred the Miami Herald to his lawyer. His immigration attorney, Peterson St. Philippe, said he was not in a position to provide detailed comments.

    “We believe it is appropriate to address the allegations through the judicial process rather than through public commentary. We trust that any reporting will reflect that the matter remains unresolved and that no findings have been made,” St. Philippe said.

    Bien-Aime is no stranger to controversy. In 2018, a former North Miami city administrator filed a lawsuit against Bien-Aime and the city claiming he had sexually harassed her for months and “held her prisoner” in a car while trying “to have sex with her.” The aide said her contract with the city was terminated in retaliation for filing the federal lawsuit against Bien-Aime, a councilman at the time.

    What the complaint says

    Prosecutors say that U.S. authorities were not aware that the Jean Philippe Janvier whom an immigration judge had ordered deported was the Philippe Bien-Aime granted U.S. citizenship. On a campaign website, Bien-Aime said he was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, before immigrating to Canada in 1991 and arriving in the U.S. in 1993.

    U.S. immigration authorities issued an identification number for Bien-Aime in 1994, according to court documents, while Janvier entered the United States in 1995 on the photo-switched passport. Two years later, while Janvier was being served a notice to show up to deportation proceedings, the U.S. Embassy in Port-Au-Prince issued Bien-Aime a tourist visa, according to an affidavit from an immigration official who reviewed his records extensively. Bien-Aime entered the U.S. in June 1997 and kept traveling between the U.S. and Haiti while Janvier’s deportation proceedings were ongoing.

    During three years of deportation proceedings, Janvier submitted a birth certificate with his name, testified that he was Jean Philippe Janvier and that he had used a fake passport. He welcomed a daughter with Ternier in 1999.

    On July 31, 2000, an immigration judge ordered Janvier and Ternier deported. The couple challenged the decision through the Board of Immigration Appeals. But the next year, Janvier notified the court he was withdrawing his appeal and that he planned on living in Haiti. The board determined that his deportation order was final in July 2001. Janvier had another child with Ternier in 2002. The Department of Homeland Security set his departure date for June 26, 2003.

    Instead of going back to Haiti, Bien-Aime married Marie Rose Chauvet, the American spouse, in 2001. Immigration authorities say that Janvier – under the name Bien-Aime – was still then married to another Haitian woman, Beatrice Gelin, who he claimed to have divorced. He applied for a green card as Philippe Bien-Aime through his marriage with Chauvet, in 2002. After he provided his fingerprints and was interviewed by immigration officers, the federal government granted Bien-Aime permanent residency.

    In his green card application filed in 2002, he did not mention his deportation order and did not list any children. During his green card interview that same year, he mentioned one daughter he said was born in Haiti in 1999. The complaint says he and Ternier had welcomed a daughter in the United States in August 1999.

    Meanwhile, in the application to make his green card permanent he listed one son: Marc Peterson, born August 1988, and no other children, according to the complaint. In his subsequent application to become a U.S. citizen, he listed Marc Peterson again, but with a different birthday, June 1987.

    Bien-Aime went on to have a third child with Ternier in 2004. Bien-Aime’s campaign website for an unsuccessful run for Miami-Dade county commissioner in 2022 described as “loving husband to Sara and proud father of Saphi, Philjae, and Terphil.”

    He applied for naturalization in 2005, once more using his current name. During the interview process to become a naturalized citizen, Bien-Aime did not disclose other names and claimed to not be married to more than one person at a time. He was approved for citizenship on Sept. 11, 2006 and took the naturalization oath 11 days later.

    Nearly 13 years after Bien-Aime became a naturalized citizen, a 2019 report out of U.S. immigration offices in Port-Au-Prince determined his marriage to Ternier and divorces to both Ternier and Gelin were fraudulent. It also linked him to the Jean Philippe Janvier identity. At the time of the investigation, he was North Miami’s mayor.

    Seven years later, in February 2026, the U.S. government moved to denaturalize him.

    Raisa Habersham

    Miami Herald

    Raisa Habersham is the race and culture reporter for the Miami Herald. She previously covered Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale for the Herald with a focus on housing and affordability. Habersham is a graduate of the University of Georgia. She joined the Herald in 2022.

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    Jay Weaver,Syra Ortiz Blanes,Raisa Habersham

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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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