Chicago – The Department of Justice has taken the rare step of trying to strip a convicted terrorist of U.S. citizenship in what some critics say could mark a new, tougher line under President Donald Trump.
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Pakistani-born Iyman Faris is serving the last years of a 20-year sentence imposed in 2003 for plotting with al-Qaida to destroy New York’s Brooklyn Bridge.
A government filing Monday in Illinois where the former Ohio truck driver is imprisoned launched the bid to revoke his citizenship. Among other things, it says Faris lacked a commitment to principles in the U.S. Constitution.
New York-based terrorism scholar Karen Greenberg says the move appears to be a method to add on an extra punishment. She says she fears it’s also a signal Trump is “redefining” the country as “anti-immigration.”
Is “a commitment to principles in the U.S. Constitution” somehow a legal requirement?
Britain had no problem in stripping a Russian born woman from her British citizenship when she was suspected by Obama’s administration of helping to establish a spy ring in the U.S., and by such a stripping of her citizenship she was prevented from being deported to (entering) Britain and was sent to Russia instead.