United States v. Milosevic
| Decision Date | 31 March 2022 |
| Docket Number | 18 C 8346 |
| Citation | 596 F.Supp.3d 1155 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Nedjo MILOSEVIC, Defendant |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois |
John Joseph William Inkeles, J. Max Weintraub, Kathryne M. Gray, US Dept. of Justcie, Civil Division, Office of Immigration Litigation, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff.
Robert James Pavich, Jeffrey A. Leon, Pavich Law Group, P.C., Chicago, IL, for Defendant.
In this action, the government seeks to denaturalize Nedjo Milosevic under 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a), claiming that he obtained U.S. citizenship illegally and by willful misrepresentation or concealment of a material fact. Milosevic is a former citizen of Yugoslavia and later of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He applied on behalf of himself and his family for admission to the United States as refugees in September of 1998, and he became a naturalized United States citizen in November of 2004. The government claims that Milosevic fabricated, concealed, and misrepresented various facts to obtain admission to the United States, to adjust his status to that of a permanent resident, and ultimately to become a United States citizen. It seeks summary judgment on three of the five counts it asserts in the complaint: Count II, which claims that Milosevic fraudulently procured admission as a permanent resident by misrepresenting his place of residence and by concealing his military service with the Zvornik Infantry Brigade of the Army of Republika Srpska ("VRS") during the Bosnian Civil War; Count IV, which claims that Milosevic never met the statutory definition of "refugee," which is the foundation for all of the immigration benefits he sought and received; and Count V, which claims that Milosevic obtained United States citizenship by concealing and willfully misrepresenting facts that were material to his eligibility for naturalization.1 Because I conclude that Milosevic is entitled to have a finder of fact determine whether the errors and omissions he admits making in materials he submitted to the Immigration and Naturalization Service ("INS") and at immigration interviews are sufficient to establish the elements of these claims, I deny summary judgment.
Milosevic, an ethnic Serb, was born in Zivinice, a city located in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Bosnia and Herzegovina.2 He lived in the Zivinice region until sometime in 1992, when he and his wife Snezada, also an ethnic Serb, left the region out of fear of conflict with the local Muslim population. In April of 1992, Snezada relocated with her parents to Loznica, Serbia, which was just across the border and a half hour bus ride from Zvornik, a town in Bosnia that was controlled by ethnic Serbs. Milosevic also left Zivinice in April of 1992, after his work supervisor told him that "because of the presence of Muslim radicals at the place where I was working nobody can guarantee us any safety and that he would advise me not to come back there." N. Milosevic Dep., ECF 60-5 at 111:8-11. Milosevic went to a nearby village, but after the Muslim military police attacked the village on May 25, 1992, he and others fled to the forest, then on to several other villages, sleeping N. Milosevic Dep., ECF 60-5 at 62:17-20. By September of 1992, Milosevic and his wife had moved into an apartment in Zvornik, which the municipal government had given them, and which had previously belonged to Muslims.3 Their elder son was born in Zvornik in 1993.
By December of 1992, Milosevic had become a member of the military police of the Army of Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb army, or "VRS"). In the VRS, Milosevic wore a uniform, carried a weapon, engaged in combat, and was obliged to follow orders; he considered the VRS an "army." Def.’s L.R. 56.1 Resp., ECF 86-7 at ¶ 25; N. Milosevic Dep., ECF 60-5 at 29:13-30:4. The parties dispute whether Milosevic was conscripted into the VRS or joined of his own volition, and also whether he became a member before or after his relocation to Zvornik. In any event, they agree that Milosevic served in the VRS from at least December of 1992 through the signing of the Dayton Accords that ended the war in Bosnia in 1995, and that he continued to receive payments from the VRS until at least June of 1996.
From 1995-1999, Milosevic and Snezada lived most of the time in Loznica, where they applied for and received refugee status from the Serbian government. See Def.’s L.R. 56.1 Resp., ECF 86-7 at ¶ 77; N. Milosevic Decl., ECF 86-2 at ¶ 5. They also spent time in Zvornik during this period, where they maintained the apartment they received from the government in 1992, and where their younger son, who was born in Loznica in September of 1998, was baptized. In or around September 3, 1998, while in Loznica, Milosevic submitted an application for classification as a refugee (his "Refugee Application") to INS with the assistance of the International Organization for Migration ("IOM"), a contractor for the State Department. To prepare the application, Milosevic met with a woman from IOM who asked him many questions, including about his service in the VRS, all of which he claims to have answered truthfully. N. Milosevic Decl., ECF 86-2 at ¶ 14. He also told the woman that he and his family could not return to their home in Zivinice because it was not safe for Serbs. Id. Milosevic returned to the IOM office at a later time, and the woman he had spoken to previously gave him forms written in English and told him to sign them. Because Milosevic could not speak or read English, he asked what the forms said; she told him that she had filled in the forms with the information he had provided. Id. at ¶¶ 15-16.
Milosevic's Refugee Application referenced and incorporated an IOM "Case Summary Sheet" setting forth the basis for his refugee claim. As Milosevic admits, this Case Summary Sheet is replete with falsehoods and descriptions of events that never occurred. For example, it states that Milosevic's house in Zivinice was "searched and ransacked by Muslim policemen" and that Milosevic "was taken to the police station by two Muslim policemen for interrogation and kept there for an hour." It goes on to state: that Snezada "fled on 10 Sep 92 with the help of a Muslim friend, wearing typical Muslim clothes," and that Milosevic "was not allowed to leave the town since he was of draft age"; that "on 12 Oct 92, two policemen took [Milosevic] to the Muslim headquarters in town, interrogated him, beat him with fists, rifle butts and an army belt," and that he "was released after three days and was left outside of town"; and that "in Mar 93 Muslim soldiers came to the village and picked up all the men of draft age of Serb ethnicity and took them to the nearby front line where he was assigned to forced labor" where he was required to "dig trenches and to cut wood for Muslim soldiers" who insulted him. Def.’s L.R. 56.1 Resp., ECF 86-7 at ¶¶ 86-99. There is no dispute that these facts are false, and that the events described never occurred. Additionally, Milosevic acknowledges that although his Refugee Application solicited information about his past military service, he disclosed only his compulsory military service with the Yugoslav army in the 1980's and failed to mention his service in the VRS from 1992-1996.
Milosevic later appeared for an interview, accompanied by his wife and his two young sons, as part of his application for classification as a refugee in the United States. N. Milosevic Decl., ECF 86-2 at ¶ 17. The interview was conducted through a translator and lasted 15-20 minutes, during which time the interviewer asked "if all of the information in the forms [he] had signed was true." Id. at ¶ 18. Milosevic confirmed that they were. According to Milosevic, the interviewer did not ask him about his service in the VRS. Id. His application was approved, and he was asked to sign additional forms written in English, which he similarly did not understand. Id. at ¶ 19.
Milosevic and his family were admitted to the United States as refugees in July of 1999. In October of 2000, while living in Idaho, Milosevic filed an application to register permanent residence in the United States (his "Adjustment Application") with the help of a Bosnian Muslim friend, as Milosevic's English was still limited. The friend explained to Milosevic the information he understood the Adjustment Application to solicit, and Milosevic answered the questions truthfully. In response to a question about past military service, Milosevic again included only his service in the Yugoslav army. As with his Refugee Application, Milosevic believed that his Adjustment Application provided the information the form requested, and that it contained English translations of the truthful information he provided based on his understanding of the questions. See N. Milosevic Decl., ECF 86-2 at ¶¶ 20-23.
Finally, in 2004, Milosevic filed an application for naturalization (his "Naturalization Application") without assistance. He answered all of the answers as he understood them. The form he filled out did not include a question about military service. Id. at ¶¶ 24-25. Thereafter, he appeared for a brief interview that he claims lasted only 5-10 minutes, at which he affirmed that everything in his application was true. N. Milosevic Decl., ECF 86-2 at ¶ 27. His application was approved, and he became a United States citizen.
Summary judgment is appropriate if the government establishes that there is no genuine dispute over any material fact and the undisputed facts entitle it to judgment as a matter of law. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a) ; see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett , 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). The substantive law controls which facts are material, and a genuine dispute over such facts exists if the "evidence is such that...
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