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MASLENJAK v. UNITED STATES 

Opinion of the Court 

to  seek  refugee  status  in  the  United  States.    Interviewed 
under  oath,  Maslenjak  explained  that  the  family  feared 
persecution in Bosnia from both sides of the national rift.
Muslims,  she  said,  would  mistreat  them  because  of  their 
ethnicity.  And  Serbs,  she  testified,  would  abuse  them 
because  her  husband  had  evaded  service  in  the  Bosnian 
Serb  Army  by  absconding  to  Serbia—where  he  remained 
hidden,  apart  from  the  family,  for  some  five  years.    See 
App. to Pet. for Cert. 58a–60a.  Persuaded of the Maslen-
jaks’  plight,  American  officials  granted  them  refugee
status, and they immigrated to the United States in 2000.

Six  years  later,  Maslenjak  applied  for  naturalization. 
Question  23  on  the  application  form  asked  whether  she 
had  ever  given  “false  or  misleading  information”  to  a 
government  official  while  applying  for  an  immigration 
benefit; question 24 similarly asked whether she had ever
“lied to a[ ] government official to gain entry or admission
into the United States.”  Id., at 72a.  Maslenjak answered 
“no” to both questions, while swearing under oath that her 
replies were true.  Id., at 72a, 74a.  She also swore that all 
her written answers were true during a subsequent inter-
view  with  an  immigration  official.    In  August  2007,
Maslenjak was naturalized as a U. S. citizen. 

But  Maslenjak’s  professions  of  honesty  were  false:  In 
fact, she had made up much of the story she told to immi-
gration officials when seeking refuge in this country.  Her 
fiction  began  to  unravel  at  around  the  same  time  she
applied  for  citizenship. 
In  2006,  immigration  officials
confronted Maslenjak’s husband Ratko with records show-
ing  that  he  had  not  fled  conscription  during  the  Bosnian
civil  war;  rather,  he  had  served  as  an  officer  in  the  Bos-
nian  Serb  Army.  And  not  only  that:  He  had  served  in  a 
brigade  that  participated  in  the  Srebrenica  massacre—a
slaughter of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians.  Within 
a  year,  the  Government  convicted  Ratko  on  charges  of 
making false statements on immigration documents.  The