Attorney General Pam Bondi has moved to denaturalize a migrant who gained citizenship during former President Barack Obama’s administration over revelations this person was convicted of sex crimes against a child.
The Southern District of Texas, McAllen Division, issued an order revoking the citizenship of Carlos Noe Gallegos, the Justice Department announced in a statement provided to Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release. Gallegos had been convicted of sexually assaulting a child prior to gaining citizenship in 2010 during Obama’s administration, and then later according to the Justice Department “withheld disclosing his illegal acts and accompanying conviction throughout his naturalization process.”
The Justice Department said in the release announcing the revocation of Gallegos’s citizenship that these acts warranted this action under federal law. “Prior to naturalizing, Mr. Gallegos sexually assaulted a child younger than 14 years,” the Justice Department release states. “Years after he naturalized, Mr. Gallegos pleaded guilty to the sexual assault, and the court issued an order of community supervision. Mr. Gallegos’s acts and his concealment of these material facts warranted the revocation of his 2010 naturalization under 8 U.S.C. § 1451.”
Bondi is quoted as well saying that this effort is part of a larger initiative from President Donald Trump’s administration to check on whether or not migrants naturalized in the past actually should have U.S. citizenship.
“American citizenship is a privilege that this child-abusing monster never should have been able to attain,” Bondi said. “We will continue ensuring that anyone who conceals such conduct while obtaining naturalization is found out and stripped of their citizenship.”
“Safekeeping the integrity of our society demands that this Administration be allowed to denaturalize monsters who sexually abuse our children,” Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division added.
The Justice Department also noted that the court in south Texas found that Gallegos illegally became a citizen because his “willful and knowing sexual contact with a minor child as described in sections 22.021(b)(1) and 22.011(c)(1) of the Texas Penal Code was a crime involving moral turpitude” and therefore because his “criminal conduct reflected negatively upon his character, he illegally procured his citizenship when he was never eligible to naturalize and should not have been naturalized.”
It is unclear at this time if the Obama administration officials who granted Gallegos naturalization knew of his background when they did so or if they did not know. Either way, he was clearly, as the Justice Department under Bondi has made clear and now a court has agreed, never supposed to get it in the first place.