Fraud Accountability Act: Any Fraud Conviction Now Triggers Deportation and Automatic Citizenship Loss

The newly introduced Fraud Accountability Act is a heavy hitter aimed squarely at non-citizens and naturalized citizens involved in fraud and other serious crimes. This isn't just tweaking the rules; it fundamentally changes who can be deported and how quickly a naturalized citizen can lose their status. If you’re a non-citizen—or even a naturalized citizen—this bill introduces some major, immediate risks for certain convictions.

No More Small-Time Fraud Exception

Currently, fraud-related convictions often have to hit a high financial threshold—often tied to the definition of an “aggravated felony”—before they automatically trigger deportation proceedings. This bill wipes that threshold clean. Section 2 establishes that any non-citizen convicted of a crime involving fraud against any private individual, corporation, or government entity is now deportable. Period. This means a conviction for something like minor check fraud or a small insurance scam, which might not have previously resulted in removal, now puts a non-citizen on the fast track to deportation. The monetary damage doesn't matter anymore. If you’re convicted, you’re deportable.

Detention Becomes Mandatory, Not Optional

When someone is facing removal, immigration authorities often have discretion over whether to detain them while their case is pending. Section 3 removes that discretion for those deportable under the new fraud provisions. It expands mandatory detention, meaning non-citizens convicted of fraud (now a deportable offense) must be detained by the government while their removal proceedings move forward. For the individual, this means mandatory time behind bars, regardless of the severity of the fraud offense or their flight risk. For the government, this is a significant expansion of the detention system, which carries substantial costs.

The Automatic Citizenship Trap

Perhaps the most dramatic change is found in Section 4, which targets naturalized U.S. citizens. Historically, revoking citizenship (denaturalization) was a separate, often lengthy, civil court process handled by specialized federal courts. This bill creates an automatic denaturalization process for naturalized citizens convicted of any crime listed in Section 237(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—a list that includes the new fraud offense, crimes of moral turpitude, and various aggravated felonies.

Under this new rule, the moment a U.S. court convicts a naturalized citizen of one of these crimes, that same criminal court must immediately revoke their citizenship and cancel their naturalization certificate. This is a massive shift. It grants jurisdiction over citizenship matters to any court—from a local district court handling a fraud case to a federal court—that issues the criminal conviction, bypassing the traditional due process safeguards of a separate civil proceeding. For a naturalized citizen, a conviction for certain crimes now carries the immediate, automatic penalty of losing their U.S. citizenship and reverting to the status of a deportable non-citizen.

The Retroactive Catch-22

Finally, Section 5 adds a tricky wrinkle: the new fraud provisions apply retroactively. Specifically, they apply to fraudulent conduct that occurred on or after September 30, 1996, as long as the non-citizen was not arrested, charged, or indicted for that fraud before this law is enacted. This means that if a non-citizen committed a minor fraud offense decades ago but was never caught or charged, they could now face deportation for that past conduct if they are charged today. This provision opens the door for enforcement actions based on very old conduct that was not previously considered a deportable offense.