Washington ― A west Michigan congressman has introduced legislation that would strip citizenship from naturalized U.S. citizens after they’ve been convicted of terrorism-related crimes and prioritize them for deportation.
U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Holland, said his Deport the Terrorists Act aims to change the process under federal law that allows such individuals to stay in the country while the denaturalization process plays out in court, usually over several years.
“It’s a hole in the law that we’re trying to fix,” Huizenga told The Detroit News.
Huizenga’s legislation lays out a process for the courts, following a conviction for federal terrorism-related offenses, to “revoke, set aside, and declare void” the final order admitting the convicted individual to citizenship, thereby canceling their certificate of naturalization.
“When you become a naturalized citizen, you reject and then walk away from your previous country, and you pledge loyalty to the United States ― the word is ‘renounce all powers and potentates’ ― you know, any sway that a foreign government ought to have,” said Huizenga, whose wife is a naturalized citizen from Canada.
“When you violate that, that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me that we would allow them to continue to be a citizen.”
The terror-related acts that the bill would cover include use of weapons of mass destruction, bombings targeting public places or government buildings, harboring, concealing or financing terrorism, providing material support to terrorists or a foreign terrorist organization or receiving military-type training from them, according to a summary.
Huizenga said one example of a naturalized citizen whom the bill would apply to is Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, originally from Sierra Leone, who shot and killed a professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia and injured others in March.
Jalloh, a former Virginia Army National Guard member, was previously sentenced to 11 years in prison on a guilty plea for attempting to aid ISIS fighters, but was released early for completing a drug program.
Huizenga’s office also noted the legislation would have applied to Ayman Ghazali of Dearborn Heights, a naturalized citizen originally from Lebanon, had he lived and been convicted.
Ghazali was identified by police as the gunman who terrorized the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield and rammed his explosive-and-gasoline-laden Ford F-150 through the temple’s doors on March 12.
Ghazali engaged in gunfire with security guards before shooting himself in the head, law enforcement officials said.
In another case, a naturalized citizen from Morocco, Khalid Ouazzani, pleaded guilty to providing material support to Al-Qaida in 2010.
The Department of Justice started his denaturalization process just this year.
mburke@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: GOP bill aims to denaturalize citizens convicted of terrorism crimes
Reporting by Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
