A Denial That Looked Unwinnable
A false claim of U.S. citizenship under INA § 212(a)(6)(C)(ii) is one of the harshest grounds of inadmissibility in the Immigration and Nationality Act. It carries no statutory waiver for an applicant for adjustment of status. A finding alone — even decades after the alleged conduct — can permanently bar a green card.
My client had lived in the United States continuously since 1995, having entered on a tourist visa and remained after it expired. He had never held a green card. In September 2020, he filed Form I-485 — his first application for adjustment of status — on a qualifying basis that, on its face, made him eligible to become a lawful permanent resident. In March 2023, USCIS denied the application. The denial letter recited a series of allegations going back to the 1990s, including that the client had once used a U.S. passport issued in another person's name — a Puerto Rican identity — to enter the United States, and had later made a sworn admission to an immigration officer to that effect.
To understand the stakes, it helps to picture what an unwaivable denial means for someone in his position. He had no green card to fall back on. Unlike a long-time permanent resident accused of fraud — who at least retains status while the dispute plays out — my client had only the I-485 itself as the bridge from three decades of unlawful presence to lawful status. With the application denied, he reverted to exactly what he had been before he filed: a removable noncitizen, now with a published USCIS finding of false-claim-of-citizenship sitting in the government's file. ICE could open a Notice to Appear on those facts at any time. And because the false-claim ground has no waiver available on adjustment, there was no I-601 hardship petition, no I-212 consent to reapply, no second I-485 — no administrative path forward at all. The denial did not just take away a benefit; it foreclosed every benefit, permanently.
On its face, the denial also appeared airtight. USCIS cited specific documents — the passport, the secondary-inspection record, and a 2007 sworn statement — as the evidentiary basis for the finding. A direct attack on the merits would have meant taking the agency at its word about what those documents said, and then arguing in federal court that the legal conclusion was wrong, against a record the government had built and we had not seen. A long, expensive, uphill fight — with a client who could be detained at any point along the way.
I took a different path.