A federal judge has revoked the U.S. citizenship of a naturalized Somali immigrant who fraudulently sponsored four of her countrymen for green cards, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
Judge Susan Richard Nelson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota entered an order to cancel the naturalization certificate of Fosia Abdi Adan, 51, who immigrated to the U.S. in 2001 through the diversity visa lottery program.
Adan is alleged to have used her diversity visa to petition for green cards on behalf of a man she falsely claimed was her husband, as well as two of her cousins whom she falsely claimed were her children. The impostors used fake names and were granted family visas, which allowed all four to eventually become American citizens, according to civil complaints.
During litigation, Adan admitted that she had obtained her U.S. citizenship by concealing of material facts, including the true nature of her relationship to the people she claimed were her family members. Because Adan’s lies were material to the naturalization decision, Judge Nelson determined her citizenship was unlawfully obtained, DOJ said.
“The current immigration system is too often abused by fraudsters and nefarious actors,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “These cases are prime examples of the unfortunate fraud that is all too common within our immigration system.”
Prior to Adan’s denaturalization, the other Somalis involved in the scam were also stripped of their U.S. citizenship. Nelson entered orders revoking the naturalization certificates of Adan’s supposed husband, Ahmed Mohamed Warsarme, 53, on Feb. 27, 2018, and her purported sons, Mustaf Abdi Adan, 33, and Faysal Jama Mire, 31, on March 19, 2018.
Under Sessions, the DOJ has prioritized high-profile civil-denaturalization cases against people who lied about or omitted material facts while applying for citizenship. Prosecutors in February filed a civil complaint to strip U.S. citizenship from a diversity visa-lottery winner who lied about illegally funneling cash to a subject of U.S. sanctions during his naturalization interviews. Later that month, DOJ lawyers filed similar actions against five convicted child molesters who lied about their criminal history during the naturalization process.
DOJ has also brought denaturalization cases against people who lied about terrorism ties and previous deportation orders.
Investigators with the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service first became aware of Adan’s scam in 2010, when Warsarme, her fake husband, sought to bring over his real wife, Yurub Jama Hirad, a Yemeni national he married in 1996. Warsarme’s visa petition tipped off investigators to the fact that he and Adan were never married and that he had used fake documents to get into the U.S.
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