United States v. Claudia Marquez Moreno

My colleagues and I agree that Claudia Moreno acquired her passport through mendacity. Bad facts, however, should not cause us to rewrite a statute. In my view, 22 U.S.C. § 2705(1) requires us to treat Moreno’s passport as conclusive evidence of her U.S. citizenship. For that reason, I respectfully dissent.

The majority’s reading of § 2705 contains a critical flaw —■ one that eviscerates the statute. To see the flaw, one needs simply to restate the holding: “a passport constitutes conclusive proof of citizenship only if the passport was issued to a U.S. citizen.” Majority Op. at 1133. In other…