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The Financial Express

US strips Indian native of citizenship

| Updated: January 11, 2018 13:45:33


US strips Indian native of citizenship

The US has revoked the citizenship of an Indian national who reportedly attained it by fraud.

In a first of its kind case, India-origin Baljinder Singh alias Davinder Singh, 43, who married a US citizen, has now been reverted to the Green Card status.

With this, Singh is now subject to removal proceedings at the Department of Homeland Security's discretion, said The Department of Justice.

Justice Department, which moved a petition in this regard before a US court last September, said that Singh in his citizenship application concealed prior orders of exclusion and his deportation under different identities than the identity under which they naturalised.

"Singh's denaturalisation is the first arising out of a growing body of cases referred to the Department of Justice by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) as part of Operation Janus," the Department of Justice said in a statement.

A US District Court in New Jersey on January 5 had entered an order revoking his naturalised US citizenship and cancelling his Certificate of Naturalisation.

Under Operation Janus, the Department of Homeland Security has identified about 315,000 cases where some fingerprint data was missing from the centralised digital fingerprint repository.

Singh, a native of India, arrived at San Francisco International Airport on September 25, 1991, without any travel documents or proof of identity. He claimed that his name was Davinder Singh.

He was placed in exclusion proceedings, but failed to appear for his immigration court hearing and was ordered excluded and deported on January 7, 1992, federal prosecutors said.

Four weeks later, on February 6, 1992, he filed an asylum application under the name Baljinder Singh. He claimed to be an Indian who entered the United States without inspection.

Singh abandoned that application after he married a US citizen, who filed a visa petition on his behalf.

Singh naturalised under the name Baljinder Singh on July 28, 2006, prosecutors alleged, according to PTI.

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