This past week, the department filed a denaturalization action against a native of Ukraine who allegedly "concealed and misrepresented his involvement in a conspiracy to smuggle over a thousand firearms components out of the United States and ship them to foreign markets." The man became a U.S. citizen in 2016, but was convicted of his crimes by a federal court in 2020.

"This case sends a clear message," said Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the DOJ's Civil Division. "The United States provided... safety, housing, and citizenship, and he returned those gains with malice, including by defrauding one of the federal agencies that provided him benefits. We will not reward this kind of behavior by allowing such an individual to retain U.S. citizenship that should not have been granted in the first place."