Federal prosecutors are trying to tear up the U.S. citizenship of a Phoenix driving school owner who they say hid a violent past overseas, including accusations that he helped lead an al-Qaida group and killed two Iraqi police officers in 2006. The Department of Justice alleges that Ali Yousif Ahmed lied under oath about his criminal and family history to secure naturalization in 2015. He was arrested in Phoenix in 2020 and has been locked up ever since while courts sort through an extradition request from Iraq.
DOJ Files Denaturalization Action in Phoenix
The Department of Justice said in a Justice Department news release that it, along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, filed a civil denaturalization complaint in U.S. District Court in Phoenix on May 8. The case is one of 12 denaturalization actions filed around the country, part of a broader push that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said is intended to restore “integrity in our naturalization process,” according to the release.
Extradition and Arrest History
A 2022 Associated Press report noted that Ahmed entered the United States in 2009 as a refugee and became a naturalized citizen in 2015. Investigators later said Iraq sought his extradition on murder charges tied to the 2006 killings of two police officers. A federal magistrate judge certified Iraq’s extradition request in April 2022, and the written certification is available to the public in federal court records. Ahmed was arrested in Phoenix in January 2020 and has remained in custody while officials work through provisional extradition steps, according to prior reporting and court filings.
How Denaturalization Works
Federal law allows the government to revoke naturalization when citizenship was “illegally procured” or obtained through concealment or willful misrepresentation under the U.S. Code at 8 U.S.C. 1451. These are civil lawsuits filed in federal district court, not criminal prosecutions. If a judge cancels a certificate of naturalization, that document becomes void and the person can then face immigration or criminal proceedings that flow from no longer being a citizen. Courts apply a particularly high standard of proof in these cases, given that stripping citizenship touches some of the most serious constitutional interests a person has.
Legal Implications
If a court agrees with prosecutors that Ahmed’s citizenship was unlawfully obtained, his naturalization could be canceled and he could lose the protections that come with being a U.S. citizen, the Department of Justice said in its Justice Department press release. The separate extradition process to Iraq would still have to run its course through the usual diplomatic and legal channels. For now, the denaturalization complaint moves ahead in federal court in Phoenix, where prosecutors must convince a judge that Ahmed’s naturalization was unlawfully procured before any cancellation of his citizenship can be ordered.
