The Department of Justice has filed a complaint to strip U.S. citizenship from Phillipe Bien-Aime, who used to be the mayor of North Miami. According to Newsweek, it’s all tied to claims that he used two different identities to get his legal status in the first place. Bien-Aime served as North Miami’s mayor from 2019 through 2022, so this definitely raises some serious questions.
The DOJ claims that he fraudulently married a U.S. citizen to gain legal status, while he supposedly already had a wife back in Haiti. Denaturalization cases like this are quite rare in the U.S. However, the Trump administration has pushed to increase investigations to remove individuals who are in the country illegally. A DOJ memo to meet this requirement led to concerns that U.S. citizens could potentially lose their status without solid cause.
