we'll proceed with the st case ballot in the bar follow your honors the government cannot do implicitly what the government has no power to do explicitly in this case the government has revoked the united states citizenship of my client mr f means and that therefore mr fallon was never a united states citizen at any time despite the issuance of officially valid certificate of citizenship in one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight however it is clear from our laws that the government may not revoke united states citizenship except by means of a proceeding properly initiated in the united states district court is there a difference between naturalization  citizenship but is merely evidence that the government is satisfied and based on the evidence that your client produced in the one thousand nine hundred and ninety s that he had acquired derivative citizenship in an earlier time that is correct judge livingston the certificate of citizenship just like a passport and just like a consular report of a birth abroad are merely indicia or evidence of citizenship they do not they represent citizenship but the underlying citizenship status is separate and must be revoked so how do we determine based on this record that in fact he is a citizen i mean in the naturalization context you have an oath and you take an oath and there's a proceeding what's the proceeding here look here in this proceeding mr felons the certificate of citizenship was was granted and that is evidence that he has been admitted to the united states and that's now citizenship with a canceled certificate your honor we challenge the government's evidentiary rulings with respect to his adoption by his uncle in the united states we  challenge the evidence that was raised against mr fallon in the proceedings below and if those if this matter were properly before a united states district court we would that we would have had opportunities to challenge those of that evidence that was offered your answer is that you should at least have an opportunity to challenge it in federal district court yes your honor notwithstanding the cancellation that's correct your honor but didn't you have an opportunity in the agency proceedings to come forward with evidence of citizenship we did your honor and the initial proceedings brought against my client were brought at a time when my call it was incarcerated in federal prison for unrelated bank fraud and unrelated bank fraud conviction however your honor what we what we're arguing is that because the venue is properly before should properly be before a united states district court the proceedings below in the eviden rulings below were not subject to the same standards yes i'm having a little difficulty understanding how the statutory scheme works in that way because there are if your client had never been issued a certificate and he was born abroad he would properly be put in removal proceedings and if at that time if he believes he acquired seditions ship through derivative means he would have needed to come forward with evidence of that before the agency am i right about that yes that is correct your honor so the so the certificate then if it's not a conferral of citizenship and can be canceled i'm so i'm having difficulty seeing why the issuance of that certificate changes the whole proper procedural mechanism that we should be following here if i understand your question correctly your honor what we are arguing is that the cancellation of the service of the certificate of citizenship maybe done m may be cancelled in a separate administrative proceeding before the executive branch of the government however in cases like or about versus reno and z oliver says to listen we believe your honor that the federal courts have reserved the power to revocation of the underlying u s citizenship and that the cancellation of the certificate is merely cancellation of evidence of citizenship at the federal courts have reserved the power or than any statute provides that may be revoked only by a court that is correct just love al however cases going all the way back to before the nd world war including schneider and versus united states stablished that because u citizenship is protected fundamentally by the united states constitution that revocation of citizenship must be done before a tribunal that has proper evidentiary standards a proper standard of proof and ability for the the immigrant to challenge the evidence against we admit your honor that opportunities were given to our client below however we assert that because of his incarceration at the beginning of the cancellation proceedings he was at a procedural disadvantage from the very beginning the government argues it's brief that we've waived many of our evidentiary arguments we've waived those able to entry arguments because they were not properly joined at the beginning when my client was in federal prison and unable to appear in court i didn't essentially that the that the attorney general has the power to make someone a citizen by finding facts to be true that would make you a citizen by derivation but doesn't have the power to revoke it that is correct your honor and just incident that i understood at the st of your argument you said that the of the certificate is not a conferral of citizenship the attorney general doesn't confer citizenship by issuing a certificate that's correct your honor you derive citizenship because you meet the statutory criteria and whether you got a certificate or not if you meet the statutory criteria and you're put in removal proceedings you can prove that you are a citizen and you can't be removed correct that is correct as livingston so i guess i'm i still am under it if there is a material issue a fact that's raised in removal proceedings as to citizenship and it comes before us we do transfer those material issues in fact to district court yes you're on that your argument is broader just making sure i understand it you're saying that the proceeding had to have commenced initially and district court and that it would be improper now to transfer to district court for a resolution of any material issues of fact you have to start over again while your honor in that regard we would request to make a motion t do you perceive a material issue of fact to have been raised in the proceedings we believe that there are three material issues of fact all pertaining to mr fallon's adoption status the st being the question of his his adoptive parent to the government we assert that mr fellow didn't was adopted by his paternal uncle who had never had married a u s citizen prior and had become naturalized as a u s citizen the government has challenge that that evidence and that argument throughout the proceedings we also challenge your honor evidence having been provided by mr fallon and adopt stepmother which we were not able to cross examine in the proceedings below and your honor we also challenge a certain poison pen letter that was drafted by mr fallon's cellmate while he was in prison in louisiana we would like to join those three have a denture issues all of which go to the to the village idiot of our client's citizenships down the question if i may go back to judge livingston's question when did requirements for us citizenship by derivation we would argue sir that the that that meeting the requirements the underlying requirements forced forced a sitting u s citizen ship are sufficient to confer upon him u s citizenship and that th issued is evidence of that can for old so it was the it was the underlying finding the the finding by the attorney general under underlying the issuance of the certificate that made him a citizen when the attorney general's conclusion was reached that he had met the the the the standards or or at the time of the naturalization of the person who he if i understand correctly when a person when it when a person a minor or lawfully living in the united states is adopted  and the parent and the adoptive parent becomes naturalized or the natural parent becomes naturalized that person becomes a citizen and as of the moment of the naturalization of the parent is not correct that is correct even if even if a certificate isn't issued for years later the person who was a citizen at the time that the that the naturalization of the parent occurred right that is correct judge without so i am not sure i understand are you saying that he became a citizen when the person he claims was his uncle adopted him or that he became a citizen when the when the attorney general issue certificate good morning they please the court russellville behalf of the attorney general this case obviously involves a petitioner who was born outside the united states and who when was placed in removal proceedings didn't contest the multiple aggravated felony charges against him but rather claimed he was  versus reno the attorney general canceled certificates of naturalization without st going to a u s district court as required by section three hundred and forty dollars of the ins on top of that the attorney general made the argument that these particular individuals were never naturalized to begin with and therefore were never citizens and therefore never needed any sort of additional process required by the statute this case is very different this alley and this petitioner is not a the issue of citizenship is foreclosed in fact the attorney general has encouraged this petitioner to come forward before the immigration court and present his evidence and the merchant judge even went to a little further and drew this petition a roadmap saying i need this naturalized or someone else adopted you or was a birth citizen so you automatically become and that question of citizen yes you can then get a certificate to prove you are a citizen and so when the attorney general determined that the certificate was no longer  valid because there was some fraud involved just the proof was removed and then this alien this petition was placed in removal proceedings and the immigration judge said are you removal this petition or said no i'm a us citizen the burden now falls to him proved you  step back for a review this petition or goes to the district director and offers a very light defense to the argument we're going to cancel your certificate he goes to the a you know and doesn't say i'm a citizen or here's the evidence i'm a citizen he says you can't my money you can't revoke my citizenship goes to the immigration judge and says you can't revoke my citizenship without a district court action the judge says you're not a national assistant bring me the evidence and i will hear your cla goes to the board of immigration appeals and persists saying you can't revoke my citizenship and the board says where was your evidence that you're a citizen doesn't take a three hundred and sixty action which is a plaintiff's action to go to district court and say i'm a citizen like the allianz did  create the material issue of fact doesn't even his reply brief say that waits till we're standing right here right now and tries to assert that i don't think that's behavior that this court should encourage and she's going to create a very difficult problem for this court as we're going to this parent in the united states and the parent or adoptive parent became naturalize and subsequently in a in a proceeding in a proceeding before the attorney general the child then child applied for a certificate of citizenship and received one then it's later determined that in that proceeding in which the certificate was issued the person made for joint representation fraudulent representation however was not whether the person who became naturalized was the parent the fraudulent representation was something else like like fraudulent concealment of criminal convictions or of having participated with the nazis in world war as this one attorney general can revoke that the attorney general can revoke the citizenship not only the the that the that you don't need a proceeding before the district court to revoke that citizenship well i just need a look clarification question i was the fraudulent support for say the nazi party or something like that was that with respect to the naturalized adoptive parent type system or was that with respect to the person who join the river to citizenship either way you  to take a little while answer that one if it's with respect to the adoptive naturalized parent and their you know that naturalized parent has to demonstrate an attachment to democracy a constitutional values and that sort of thing so if that was fraud and that you would require section three  action to clear that up i would have to go to the district court to denaturalized up to kill a person and then that can have a cascade of effects towards the derivative citizen however if you're talking about the director says that type of fraud would never come up because a derivative derivative citizen appears before the agency but refuses to take an oath but he did meet the statutory requirements and then he would be not eligible for certificate so if one issued it shouldn't have issued that he would still be an american citizen because he met derivatives requirements in that circumstance you'd have to go to district court in the st instance right you know i think that would actually be an issue of law and not an issue of material fact because it's whether because there's no material defines naturalization as the conferring of nationality of the state upon a person after birth by any means whatsoever and that's a c section no one a twenty three but then it's further to find your honor in section three do you agree with your adversary that that if there was a material issue of fact raised before the agency in the petition comes to us here our general practice would be to refer it to the district court even at this juncture to resolve the issue i would your honor if this person actually alleged a material issue of fact while this was in any sort of proceedings before the agency but this petitioners argument consistently up until approximately seven minutes ago was that my national  my citizenship had been in permissibly revote not that there was any sort of material issue of fact this is the st time we have heard that at this late juncture of this th hour and as i said earlier i'm not so sure that's a good practice to encourage but i your honors i would just like to make three points in rebuttal we have consistently challenge the evidence below in our briefs and in the proceedings below we raised the evidentiary questions in our briefs and i would just like to refer you to our briefs and to the certified record to show that that evidentiary issues were joined to below but yet we assert that the proceeding below is before the improper forum secondly your honors if we were to accept the government's argument in this case we would be creating two different status citizenship by derivation would have fewer constitutional protections and citizens who derive who obtain their citizenship by naturalization and lastly your honour's our request for relief throughout these proceedings from the very beginning of briefing has always been to request a referral of this case to a u s district court we do not believe that this is the st time that we've requested that will read that  we believe that that request for relief is consistent with section two hundred and forty two dollars b five of the immigration nationalities act he wrote seems troublesome on the part of the government's argument on this and certain logic to it is that if i understand the government's position correctly where a person has obtained citizenship or has obtained a certificate of citizenship  with respect to do citizenship the and has lived a life as a citizen which has never been questioned or challenged the government at any time can simply go to an administrative judge without needing to go to a court and and and and say as as your adversary counsel was saying to me in response to my hypothetical question well the the parent from whom you derived citizenship from whose naturalization you derive citizenship sixty years ago i can get an administrative judge to approve to find in the government's favor on the out of your citizenship which has been used which has been assumed and evidenced by a certificate of the attorney general for fifty years disappears and your citizenship disappears without having the opportunity your opportunity to go to a u s judge to contest that seems to me to be to the troublesome of the way i understand the theoretical basis for the argument as well that that is exactly what we are contending the danger here is that if we allow the government to go back and make that determination whether that of citizenship initio the government will be will be impeding upon the jurisdiction of the u s district courts which have initially have jurisdiction over these matters but the government's argument rests on the language and the structure of these interlocking statutes and one of the questions that i asked was about all of the known one hundred and twenty three in the word naturalization you heard the government's thank you ronnie thank you beth i will take the matter under it