At Least 858 Immigrants Mistakenly Granted Citizenship

The US government has mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud who had pending deportation orders, according to an internal Homeland Security audit. The Homeland Security Department's inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birth dates to apply for citizenship with US Citizenship and Immigration Services and that such discrepancies weren't caught because their fingerprints were missing from government databases, the AP reports. DHS said an initial review of these cases suggest that some of the individuals may have ultimately qualified for citizenship anyway, and that the lack of digital fingerprint records does not necessarily mean they committed fraud.

The report does not identify any of the immigrants by name, but Inspector General John Roth's auditors said they were all from "special interest countries"—those that present a national security concern for the United States—or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud. DHS said the findings reflect what has long been a problem for immigration officials—old paper-based records containing fingerprint information that can't be searched electronically. DHS says immigration officials are in the process of uploading these files and that officials will review "every file" identified as a case of possible fraud. Roth's report said fingerprints are missing from federal databases for as many as 315,000 immigrants with final deportation orders or who are fugitive criminals. (More immigrants stories.)