Federal Appeals Court Rules that INS Has No Authority to Revoke Citizenship
Posted Aug 21, 2000

On July 20, 2000 the Federal Court of Appeals in California made a precedent-setting decision, stating that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has no authority to denaturalize citizens and that the power of denaturalization rests with the Federal Court only.

By way of background, prior to 1990 the right to confer naturalization was vested in the courts. In 1990 a law was passed that now allows the Attorney General of the United States (through the INS) the power to naturalize citizens. (Courts can still have a role; applicants can still request a court naturalization ceremony. However, it is INS that processes the naturalization application.) The INS read this change in the law to include the power to reopen and revoke naturalization orders as well as to naturalize potential United States citizens. Based on this reading, in 1996 the INS created regulations that allowed them to denaturalize citizens administratively without approval from the court.

Subsequent to the regulation, the INS proceeded to issue notices to naturalized citizens indicating that they intended to revoke their citizenship administratively. The Plaintiffs took the INS to court.

In a unanimous decision the court stated that agencies such as the INS cannot confer power onto themselves. Rather, an administrative and regulatory agency can act only if the statute explicitly states that the agency has that power. An agency is not free to infer that it has such authority under the law. Here the statute indicated that the power to denaturalize rested exclusively with the courts. The 1990 law changed the procedure for granting naturalization, but not for taking it away.