Legislation stripping citizenship from U.S. terrorists

A CNN article this morning heralds “Bill aims to strip certain Americans of their citizenship.”

"A bipartisan group of legislators on Thursday introduced legislation in Congress to strip citizenship from any American found to be involved in terrorism.," the article says. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, and Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts, co-sponsored the bill in the Senate, while an identical bill was introduced in the House by Reps. Jason Altmire, D-Pennsylvania, and Charlie Dent, R-Pennsylvania. (See Senate Bill 3327 and House Bill 5237)

"'As the attempted terrorist attack on Times Square showed us again, our enemies today are even more willing than the Nazis or fascists were to kill innocent civilian Americans [in WWII],' Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told reporters. 'Our enemies today are stateless actors who don't wear uniforms and plot against Americans abroad and here in the United States…'"

The bill, Lieberman said "…would simply update the 1940 law to account for the enemy that we are fighting today… Many have said this law goes too far. Remember, this bill only updates an existing statute that has been on the books for 70 years that accounts for the terrorist enemy that we are fighting today"

"Legal experts, meanwhile, argue that the new bill has serious constitutional problems," the article said. "'It's unconstitutional,' said Christopher Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union. 'Taking away someone's citizenship is a truly extraordinary step and to do that based on mere suspicion and to be giving that power to government bureaucrats without ever having a court trial will be an amazing step.'"

CNN noted that the Supreme Court had examined citizenship rights in the 1980 case of Vance v. Terrazas. That case involved the son of a Mexican citizen born in the United States who, at the age of 22, executed an application for a certificate of Mexican nationality, swearing "adherence, obedience, and submission to the laws and authorities of the Mexican Republic" and "expressly [renouncing] United States citizenship, as well as any submission, obedience, and loyalty to any foreign government, especially to that of the United States of America. . . ."

Vance, however, wasn't the first consideration, as the District Court prior to the Supreme Court's hearing it observed that "the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, as construed in Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253, 268 (1967), '[protects] every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship' and that every citizen has 'a constitutional right to remain a citizen . . . unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship.'" The Supreme Court there agreed.

The New York Times also had an article.