Trump administration 'could find any excuse to deport immigrants including trivial mistakes like speeding tickets' warns US Chief Justice
- John Roberts made comment after deportation of Serbian Divna Maslenjak
- Her citizenship was revoked after it emerged she had not revealed her husband had been a member of the Bosnian Serb army
- Roberts warned offences like speeding tickets could soon be used to justify deportations
- Roberts, along with other Supreme Court judges, has indicated support for Maslenjak
'Trivial' infractions could be used as an excuse to strip immigrants of their citizenship, the US Chief Justice has warned in a scathing criticism of the Trump administration.
John Roberts warned that failure to declare speeding tickets could be used as an excuse to evict people from the US.
His comments follow a ruling against Divna Maslenjak, a Serbian immigrant who is bidding to regain her US citizenship, which was revoked after she wrongly claimed her husband had not been part of the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s.
Roberts, along with other Supreme Court judges, has indicated support for Maslenjak.
US Chief Justice John Roberts has warned that failing to declare speeding tickets could be used as an excuse to evict people from the country
The conservative chief justice said in the past he has exceeded the speed limit while driving, but warned that if immigrants fail to disclose similar offences when asked if they had ever broken the law, they could lose their citizenship.
He asked Justice Department lawyer Robert Parker: 'Now you say that if I answer that question "no", 20 years after I was naturalized as a citizen, you can knock on my door and say, 'Guess what, you're not an American citizen after all?''
Roberts warned the government could likely find an excuse to deport most naturalized citizens, and warned this could lead to 'prosecutiorial abuse'.
He observed: 'That to me is troublesome to give that extraordinary power, which, essentially, is unlimited power, at least in most cases, to the government.'
Trump has sought to restrict immigration and deport people who have entered the United States illegally.
Maslenjak entered the United States with her husband and two children in 2000, granted refugee status over a claimed fear of ethnic persecution in Bosnia at the hands of Muslims.
They settled in Ohio. She became a US citizen in 2007, but concealed her husband Ratko's service in a Bosnian Serb Army brigade that participated in the notorious 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.
Maslenjak's citizenship was revoked, and she and her husband were deported to Serbia last October.
Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer shared Roberts' concern, noting he had once walked into a government building with a pocketknife on his key chain in violation of the law.
'It's, to me, rather surprising that the government of the United States thinks that Congress is interpreting this statute and wanted it interpreted in a way that would throw into doubt the citizenship of vast percentages of all naturalized citizens,' Breyer said.
Trump has sought to restrict immigration and deport people who have entered the United States illegally
Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy also rebuked Parker, saying: 'It seems to me that your argument is demeaning the priceless value of citizenship.'
There are around 20 million naturalized US citizens, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
The legal question is whether Maslenjak's false statements had a material effect on the US decision to grant her refugee status.
The government argued it only matters that she made a false statement, not whether it had any impact on its decision to grant refugee status.
At a 2009 hearing to help her husband avoid deportation after he was convicted of making a false statement by concealing his military service, she admitted that when she had applied to be a refugee she had not revealed that from 1992 to 1997 the family lived in Bosnia and her husband served in the military.
She was later convicted of lying on her citizenship application. This was the last oral argument of the court's current term. A ruling is due by the end of June.
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