A Capuchin Franciscan and a former priest are among 10 people who have been stripped of their U.S. citizenship because of crimes committed before their naturalisation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice announced last week.
"When you commit fraud during the naturalisation process, you forfeit the right to keep your U.S. citizenship," said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin in a July 22 press release.
Mullin continued: "These criminal aliens, comprised of drug traffickers, pedophiles and fraudsters, lost that right and exploited our immigration system — harming real U.S. citizens. DHS is committed to ensuring we denaturalise and remove these fraudsters with every tool at our disposal."
The United States moved to denaturalise Fr Urbano Vázquez Ortega, 53, on July 10, according to the DHS press release. Vázquez Ortega, a Capuchin friar, was arrested in November 2018 and charged with sexually abusing two minors. He was serving at a church in Washington, DC, at the time of his arrest.
The following year, Vázquez Ortega was sentenced to 15 years in prison for those crimes. In 2021, he was found guilty in a second case of sexually abusing an adult woman and was sentenced to an additional 180 days in prison.
Vázquez Ortega, a native of Mexico, became a U.S. citizen in 2017. In the five-count complaint seeking to revoke his citizenship, the United States alleges that he "committed these crimes before, during, and after his naturalization".
A former priest from Poland also had his citizenship revoked, DHS said. The department did not specify the exact date, but said it occurred "over the last 30 days".
Marcin Stanisław Garbacz, 47, was a priest of the Diocese of Rapid City, South Dakota. In 2019, five years after becoming a U.S. citizen, he was charged with wire fraud, money laundering and transporting stolen money. According to DHS, Garbacz stole US$259,696 from parish collections at three parishes in South Dakota before his naturalisation. He was convicted of wire fraud and filing a false tax return.
In 2020, Garbacz was sentenced to nearly eight years in prison for the financial crimes.
While serving that sentence, it was discovered that Garbacz had secretly recorded a 17-year-old showering during a church trip to Poland. He was subsequently convicted of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor in a foreign country and sentenced to an additional five years in prison, to be served after his previous sentence.
Naturalised U.S. citizenship may be revoked "if the naturalization was illegally obtained or obtained by hiding important facts or by lying", DHS said.
