NEW YORK (TIP): Gurmeet Singh, who became a naturalized US citizen, had concealed and misrepresented in the naturalization application that he had previously kidnapped and raped a female passenger of his taxicab.
The United States filed a denaturalization action in the Eastern District of New York against him this week.
Authorities said Singh had entered the US through family-based immigration laws.
“This Department of Justice will continue to strip citizenship from those who commit heinous crimes and conceal them during the naturalization process,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi.
“American citizenship is a great and sacred privilege that must be earned honestly,” she added.
According to the Justice Department, Singh drove his passenger to a side street after she fell asleep in the back seat of his cab.
The passenger woke up to find Singh on top of her with a knife to her throat, telling her to stop resisting if she wanted to live. Singh then bound and gagged her, blindfolded her and raped her.
Singh concealed these acts throughout his naturalization proceedings and naturalized as a US citizen in October 2011.
After naturalizing, Singh was convicted in New York of Rape in the First Degree and Kidnapping in the Second Degree as a Sexually Motivated Felony and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
“This individual’s vile acts prove that he should not have been granted US citizenship,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said.
“Singh entered our country through family-based immigration laws, then committed horrible crimes before lying about them to become a US citizen. We will now correct this injustice,” he added.
US Attorney Joseph Nocella for the Eastern District of New York said Singh secured US citizenship through “deceit”, and on the heels of committing the heinous crimes of rape and kidnapping.
“This case, brought to strip the defendant of citizenship that he did not earn and to which he was not entitled, demonstrates our Office’s commitment to protecting the American people and defending the sanctity of US citizenship,” Nocella said.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalized US citizen’s citizenship may be revoked, and his certificate of naturalization cancelled, if the naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation, the Justice Department said.
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