US moves to strip citizenship from one Haitian and two Cuban nationals
The Justice Department says the three are among 40 people targeted in what it calls the largest denaturalisation effort in modern history.
NEW YORK, United States. The Trump administration says it has filed denaturalisation actions in several US district courts against one Haitian and two Cuban nationals, among 40 individuals accused of what it called "serious offenses".
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said on October 5 that the complaints, filed between August 21 and October 2, 2026, represent "the largest volume of complaints submitted in a single period under the Trump administration".
The DOJ named the Haitian national as Arnouse Merlien and the Cuban nationals as Javier Marrero-Pando and Lazaro Trujillo Viton. The others targeted come from countries including Colombia, Mexico, the United Kingdom, India, Nigeria, Ghana, Venezuela, China and Canada.
Under the US Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalised citizen's citizenship may be revoked "if the naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation", the DOJ said.
US Attorney General Todd Blanche described the announcement as "the largest denaturalization effort in modern history".
"Under President Trump's leadership, the Department of Justice will continue to employ the denaturalization process to maintain our national security and protect the American people," he said.
Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate said: "Every single one of these individuals lied their way into US citizenship."
The Haitian case
The DOJ said that on September 28 it filed a complaint in the Southern District of Florida seeking to denaturalise Haitian-born Arnouse Merlien, 48, of West Palm Beach. Merlien naturalised in 2016.
In 2018, the DOJ said, she was charged and convicted in the Northern District of Georgia of conspiracy to defraud the government with respect to claims, having taken part in a scheme to submit fraudulent income tax refund claims to the IRS in the years before her naturalisation. The three-count complaint alleges she illegally procured her citizenship.
The Cuban cases
On August 31, the DOJ filed a case in the Middle District of Georgia against Cuban-born Javier Marrero-Pando, 60, of Athens, Georgia. It said he pleaded guilty in June 2022 to aggravated sodomy against a special needs man, an offence committed in May 2020, and was sentenced to life with all but 15 years suspended.
The DOJ said that at his naturalisation interview in October 2020, Marrero-Pando "falsely stated under oath that he had never committed a crime for which he had not been arrested".
On October 1, the DOJ filed a complaint in the District of Columbia against Cuban-born Lazaro Eduardo Trujillo Viton, 40. It said he concealed during the naturalisation process his involvement in a conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, including submitting fraudulent Medicare claims, for which he was convicted after naturalising.
"The United States is, therefore, seeking to revoke Trujillo's naturalized citizenship," the DOJ said.
