Houston federal judge revokes sex offender's naturalized citizenship

Jose Arizmendi is shown here in a 1996 mug shot. Click the gallery to learn the Houston-area cities ranked by ratio of sex offenders. Jose Arizmendi is shown here in a 1996 mug shot. Click the gallery to learn the Houston-area cities ranked by ratio of sex offenders. Photo: DPS Photo: DPS Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Houston federal judge revokes sex offender's naturalized citizenship 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A federal judge this week approved an order revoking the naturalized citizenship of a Harris County man convicted of a sex offense more than 20 years earlier, one of a growing number of immigrants stripped of citizenship in a push that began in the final years of the Obama administration.

Jose Arizmendi, a native of Mexico, failed to disclose his 1996 conviction when he applied for citizenship, according to federal prosecutors.

"The Justice Department is committed to preserving the integrity of our nation's immigration system," Acting Assistant Attorney General Chad A. Readler said in a statement.

"We will aggressively pursue denaturalization in cases where individuals lie on their naturalization applications, especially in a circumstance like this one, which involved a child sex abuser. Civil denaturalization cases are an important law enforcement tool for protecting the public, including our children."

The 54-year-old Arizmendi pleaded guilty in Harris County to aggravated sexual assault of a child in April 1996, accepting 10 years of probation as part of a deferred adjudication agreement.

He applied to become a citizen later that month, and during his October 1996 immigration interview, he said "no" when asked if he'd ever been arrested or convicted of a crime more serious than a traffic violation.

In light of his answer, the government approved his naturalization application and Arizmendi became a citizen later that year.

But eventually, his past caught up with him.

Through records searches, immigration authorities found out about his 1996 conviction, prosecutors said. They then flagged the case and turned it over to the Department of Justice, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Goldman.

"We did not take any action at first because we could not find the individual," he said in a phone interview Thursday.

Just before filing the case in 2015, authorities learned Arizmendi was being held in a Mexican prison after a 2012 arrest there for rape of a minor.

Although Arizmendi might have qualified for criminal denaturalization proceedings, a 10-year statute of limitations forced the federal government to seek a civil denaturalization instead.

It took more than a year to work through the logistics of serving legal papers to the prison south of the border where Arizmendi was serving his 18-year sentence.

On Tuesday, nearly two years after the case was originally filed, Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore ruled that Arizmendi failed to meet the requirements for naturalization and unlawfully procured his citizenship by concealing his conviction, a move that precluded him from demonstrating the good moral character requisite for U.S. citizenship.

Now, he's been ordered to immediately surrender and deliver his Certificate of Naturalization.

In the final years of President Barack Obama's administration, the federal government began stripping citizenship at a pace not matched by purges in the 1980s and 1990s targeting naturalized Nazi war criminals.

So far, President Donald Trump's Justice Department seems to be keeping up that pace.

The Department of Justice did not provide exact data on denaturalizations, but an investigation by SeattlePI.com identified 88 such cases over the past eight years, including nine in Texas. SeattlePI.com is a news site owned by Hearst, the Chronicle's parent company.

The 88 cases are a tiny fraction of the 20 million naturalized citizens living in the U.S., although more immigrants could be at risk of similar scrutiny as part of a government review of aged citizenship documents.

In theory, naturalized citizenship should be permanent, except in cases where the applicant is later found to have lied or become naturalized through fraud. In recent years, what qualified as fraud could be surprisingly broad.

In a recent U.S. Supreme Court hearing earlier this year, the Justice Department confirmed that naturalized immigrants could be stripped of citizenship for something as minor as failing to tell immigration officials they broke the speed limit two decades earlier. This month, a Supreme Court ruling reined in the DOJ's power, mandating that the trivial misstatements aren't enough to revoke citizenship.

In some cases — like Arizmendi's — the factual omissions may be more central to the citizenship process.

"Applications for naturalization must be candid with all material facts," said Acting U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez for the Southern District of Texas.

"Like in this case, failing to disclose material data should result in denaturalization."

Levi Pulkkinen of SeattlePI.com contributed to this report. The Seattle PI is owned by Hearst, the parent company of the Houston Chronicle.