Opinion ID: 859170
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the right of citizenship

Text: “Citizenship in the United States of America is among our most valuable rights.” Gorbach v. Reno, 219 F.3d 1087, 1098 (9th Cir. 2000) (en banc). It is the right that “protects our life, liberty, and property from arbitrary deprivation.” Id. What is more, all of the opportunities we seek to pass onto our children, “depend on [our children’s] secure rights to stay in this country and enjoy its guarantees of life, liberty, and property, and the domestic peace and prosperity that flow from those guarantees.” Id. at 1099. “[T]o deprive a person of his [or her] American citizenship is an extraordinarily severe penalty.” Klapprott v. United States, 335 U.S. 601, 612 (1949). “To deport one who so claims to be a citizen obviously deprives him of liberty,” and “[i]t may result also in loss of both property and life, or of all that makes life worth living.” Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U.S. 276, 284 (1922). Proceedings determining the loss of citizenship place “the fate of a human being . . . at MONDACA -VEGA V . HOLDER 27 stake.” Knauer v. United States, 328 U.S. 654, 659 (1946) (comparing denaturalization to deportation).