United States v. Eguilos
| Citation | 383 F.Supp.3d 1014 |
| Decision Date | 16 April 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 2:18-cv-399 WBS AC,2:18-cv-399 WBS AC |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of California |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Christian Oribello EGUILOS, Defendant. |
Mary Lynn Larakers, Department Of Justice-Office Of Immigration Litigation District Court Section, Washington, DC, Audrey Benison Hemesath, United States Attorney's Office, Sacramento, CA, for Plaintiff.
Carolyn Mary Wiggin, Christina Sinha, Office of the Federal Public Defenders, Sacramento, CA, for Defendant.
MEMORANDUM & ORDER RE: MOTION TO DISMISS
This court must once again dispel the commonly held misconception that all American citizens are afforded the same rights of citizenship. See United States v. Dang, No. 2:01-cv-1514 WBS DAD, 2004 WL 2731911, at *1 (E.D. Cal. Nov. 15, 2004). Through the denaturalization process, Congress has created two distinct classes of American citizens. The first class of citizens includes those whose mothers happened to be physically present in the United States, whether legally or illegally, at the moment they were born, and those whose parents were American citizens. See 8 U.S.C. § 1401 et seq. These citizens are forever secure in their citizenship. It can never be taken from them, no matter what they may have done in the past or what they may do in the future.
The second class of citizens, and the focus of this case, consists of those individuals who acquire their citizenship through naturalization. See 8 U.S.C. § 1421 et seq. To even qualify for naturalization, an individual must meet a long list of criteria. They must wait at least five years after establishing permanent residency, pass a citizenship test, truthfully answer questions posed by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services ("USCIS"), be a person of good moral character, and swear allegiance to the Constitution. These requirements, unique to those applying for naturalization, demonstrate only the beginning of the substantial burdens this country places on these second-class citizens.
Once a naturalized citizen completes this arduous process, their American citizenship still hangs in the balance, at the mercy of government officials. The government can always initiate proceedings to revoke a naturalized individual's citizenship if it believes that the naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation. For instance, USCIS always asks a prospective citizen whether they have "EVER committed ... a crime or offense for which [they] were NOT arrested." Form N-400, Application for Naturalization 14 (2016), online at https://www.uscis.gov/n-400 (last visited April 12, 2019) (emphasis in original). The scope of the question by itself is alarming and sets a trap for the unwary applicant. Given the thousands of possible offenses an individual can commit each day, no applicant can answer this question truthfully without jeopardizing their entire application and risking self-incrimination. See OFFENSE, Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014) (defining an offense as "[a] violation of the law; a crime, often a minor one."). Nevertheless, a false answer gives the government nearly limitless leverage over the naturalized individual's citizenship. As the aforementioned question is often repeated during an individual's citizenship interview, the government can argue that such false testimony means that the individual never possessed the requisite good moral character for citizenship. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(f)(6). Or the government can simply claim that an untruthful answer caused the individual's naturalization to be illegally procured by concealment or willful misrepresentation. See 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a).
And this boundless discretion means that these second-class citizens can never feel entirely secure in their claim to American citizenship. As Chief Justice Roberts aptly observed, nothing stops the government from instituting these proceedings at any time, even some decades after a citizen is naturalized. Tr. of Oral Argument at 27–28, 2017 WL 1495528, Maslenjak v. United States, 137 S.Ct. 1918 (2017) (No. 16-309 ). There is also no assurance that the government will always institute these proceedings fairly, as it may it may harbor any number of ulterior motives. For example, during the McCarthy Era, the government frequently sought to denaturalize citizen-members of the Communist Party in an attempt to suppress their political beliefs. See, e.g., Chaunt v. United States, 364 U.S. 350, 351, 81 S.Ct. 147, 5 L.Ed.2d 120 (1960) (); Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118, 121, 63 S.Ct. 1333, 87 L.Ed. 1796 (1943) (). And once the government starts the denaturalization process, these civil proceedings are replete with procedural shortcomings given the important right at stake. See Cassandra Robertson & Irina Manta, (Un)Civil Denaturalization, 94 N.Y.U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2019) (manuscript at 49-54), https://bit.ly/2uMeBow (cataloguing the due process deficiencies of civil denaturalization). Defendants often do not have the right to a court-appointed attorney nor the money to hire one. It is within this unfortunate backdrop that this matter comes before the court as the defendant in this case, Christian Oribello Eguilos, is part of this second class of American citizens.
Defendant Christian Eguilos is a native of the Philippines. (Compl. ¶ 12 (Docket No. 1).) He became a permanent resident of this country on July 28, 2003. (Id. ) In July 2013, defendant filed an application for naturalization with USCIS. (Compl. Ex. D (Docket No. 1-1).) As part of his application, which he signed under the penalty of perjury, defendant represented that he had not committed a crime or offense for which he had not been arrested. (Id. ) Later, in October 2013, Isagani Acance, an immigration officer with USCIS, interviewed defendant concerning his eligibility for naturalization. (Compl. ¶ 18.) During the interview and under oath, defendant again responded that he had not committed a crime or offense for which he had not been arrested. (Id. ¶¶ 20-21.) USCIS subsequently approved defendant's naturalization application. (Id. ¶ 26.) Defendant then signed the provided notice of a naturalization oath ceremony and indicated that he had not committed any crime or offense since his interview. On November 6, 2013, defendant took the oath of allegiance to become a citizen, and USCIS issued him a certificate of naturalization that same day.
Fourteen months later, on January 2, 2015, the State of California filed a felony complaint charging defendant with fourteen counts of criminal offenses relating to the sexual abuse of minors. (Compl. Ex. C.) Later that year, pursuant to a plea agreement, defendant pled nolo contendere before the Los Angeles County Superior Court to four counts of forcible lewd acts upon a child in violation of California Penal Code § 288(b)(1).1 The four counts covered conduct between January 2011 and December 2014. The Superior Court accepted defendant's plea, found him guilty on those four counts, sentenced him to forty years in prison, and ordered him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
On February 22, 2018, the United States brought this action to revoke and set aside defendant's citizenship and cancel his certificate of naturalization under the Immigration and Naturalization Act ("INA"), 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a). The court appointed the Office of the Federal Defender as counsel of record for defendant. (Docket No. 19.) Defendant now moves to dismiss the complaint against him in full. (Docket No. 20.)
On a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the inquiry before the court is whether, accepting the allegations in the complaint as true and drawing all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff's favor, the plaintiff has stated a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009). "The plausibility standard is not akin to a ‘probability requirement,’ but it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully." Id. "A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Id. A complaint that offers mere "labels and conclusions" will not survive a motion to dismiss. Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
The denaturalization statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1451, directs courts to revoke a citizen's naturalization if naturalization was "illegally procured" or "procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation." Id. § 1451(a). The government bears the burden of proof in denaturalization proceedings. See Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U.S. 490, 505, 101 S.Ct. 737, 66 L.Ed.2d 686 (1981). And the evidence justifying revocation of citizenship must "be clear, unequivocal, and convincing and not leave the issue in doubt." Id. at 517, 101 S.Ct. 737 (citations omitted). "[O]nce a district court determines that the Government has met its burden of proving that a naturalized citizen obtained his citizenship illegally or by willful misrepresentation, it has no discretion to excuse the conduct." Id. (emphasis added).
"No alien has the slightest right to naturalization unless all statutory requirements are complied with." United States v. Ginsberg, 243 U.S. 472, 475, 37 S.Ct. 422, 61...
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...the touching reached by the statute could be "outwardly innocuous and inoffensive." Id. at 473 ; see also United States v. Eguilos , 383 F. Supp. 3d 1014, 1029 (E.D. Cal. 2019) (opining that § 288(b)(1) was not a categorical crime of moral turpitude). Nevertheless, when § 288 serves as the ......