Correction: The headline has been updated to omit the incorrect statement that loss of citizenship was once reserved for Nazis.

A Grand Prairie immigrant was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and deported to Nigeria after a felony conviction for indecency with a minor this week.

Emmanuel Olugbenga Omopariola (Texas Department of Public Safety)

Emmanuel Olugbenga Omopariola, 61, was convicted of indecency with a 7-year-old girl, an offense committed before he was naturalized, according to federal officials and federal court papers.

He was deported back to Nigeria on Thursday, under escort from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

“This deportation ends this U.S. chapter for Omopariola who sabotaged his own future and opportunities through his heinous crimes against a child, and his lies on his naturalization application and in interviews,” said Simona L. Flores, field office director for removal operations for ICE in the Dallas region.

In 1983, Omopariola legally entered the US. on a nonimmigrant student visa, according to an ICE statement. In 2004, Omopariola was granted U.S. citizenship, according to a federal court filing.

In 2015, Omopariola pleaded guilty in Texas state court to indecency with a child by sexual contact, a second-degree felony he committed in 2002, ICE said.

He was sentenced to five years of community supervision and placed on a sex offender registry, the federal agency said. He had been in ICE custody since his arrest in April of this year, shortly after proceedings that stripped him of U.S. citizenship.

Stripping a naturalized U.S. citizen of their citizenship is an unusual and incredibly rare move. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a federal court may revoke naturalization through a civil or criminal proceeding if the citizenship was obtained through fraud or misrepresentation.

"Revoking someone's naturalization is very rare," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer and professor at Cornell Law School. "Until now, the government has usually revoked a naturalized person's U.S. citizenship only for egregious acts like hiding the fact that they worked at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II."

But Yale-Loehr said stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship may become more common. Under an initiative called Operation Janus, the government is investigating those it believe may have lied on their naturalization applications, he noted.

That operation predates the administration of President Donald Trump, who has made an immigration crackdown one of his signature issues.

Omopariola was one of five child-sex abusers who had their cases highlighted in a November release from the Justice Department. The agency filed denaturalization suits against all of them.

According to the federal court judgment revoking his 2004 naturalization, Omopariola didn't disclose "unlawful activity for which he had not been arrested." That was material to his naturalization and immigration authorities would have found him ineligible for naturalization, the court judgment read. Omopariola represented himself in the case, according to the court filing.

Last fiscal year, about 715,000 immigrants became naturalized U.S. citizens, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services statistics.