US government moves to strip Pakistani migrant of American citizenship

Federal prosecutors for the US government on Monday filed a lawsuit asking to strip a Pakistani-origin convict of his US citizenship, the Guardian reported.

Prosecutors are arguing that he committed immigration fraud when he first entered the country.

According to the newspaper, the lawsuit was filed by Chad Reader, acting assistant attorney general and former lawyer for US President Trump’s election campaign, and the US attorney for southern Illinois, Donald Boyce.



The man in question, Iyman Faris, is currently serving a 20-year-old prison sentence for involvement in an Al-Qaeda conspiracy to attack the Brooklyn Bridge. Faris is accused of entering the US in 1994 on a passport not his own, while his citizenship is also under scrutiny as he is accused of deceiving the authorities by falsely swearing allegiance to the country.

The government finds Faris’s connections with the militant organisation to prove that he did adopt the “principles of the constitution” and is “not well-disposed to the good order and happiness” of the United States, the newspaper said.

The 47-year-old also omitted his part in military combat in Kashmir and Afghanistan in the 1980s and links to militant organisations in Bosnia and Pakistan while applying for the US citizenship.



In a statement, Reader said that the government “will continue to pursue denaturalisation proceedings against known or suspected terrorists who procured their citizenship by fraud”.

When the Guardian contacted the Department of Justice for comment, the spokesperson did not “respond to questions about the involvement of Jeff Sessions, the new US attorney general, in the decision to proceed with action against Faris”.

Faris pleaded guilty in the case blaming him for the conspiracy to bomb the bridge. According to prosecutors on the original case, he allegedly met Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in the early 2000s – the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks in New York.