United States v. Eleazar Corral Valenzuela
United States v. Eleazar Corral Valenzuela
Opinion
Seventeen years after Eleazar Corral Valenzuela (Corral) was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a minor family member in Illinois state court, the United States filed a civil complaint to revoke his naturalized citizenship and cancel his certificate of naturalization.
I
Corral, a native of Mexico, was admitted to the United States as a lawful permanent resident in 1994. In January 1999, he applied for naturalization, and he became a United States citizen in June 2000.
Shortly after, a grand jury in Kane County, Illinois indicted Corral on seven counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Less than five months after becoming a United States citizen, Corral pleaded guilty to one count of the indictment, which charged:
On or about June 9, 1998 through February 26, 2000, Eleazar Corral committed the offense of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Abuse, Class 2 Felony in violation of Chapter 720, Section 5/12-16(b) of the Illinois Compiled Statutes, as amended, in that said defendant committed an act of sexual conduct with [redacted] in that the defendant knowingly touched the vagina of [redacted] for the purpose of the sexual gratification of the defendant.
Corral was convicted under Illinois's aggravated criminal sexual abuse statute, 720 ILCS 5/12-16(b), which at the time of his conviction stated:
The accused commits aggravated criminal sexual abuse if he or she commits an act of sexual conduct with a victim who was under 18 years of age when the act was committed and the accused was a family member.
In 2017, the United States filed a five-count civil complaint seeking to revoke Corral's citizenship on the grounds that he obtained his citizenship illegally and by willful misrepresentation or concealment of a material fact.
See
Corral filed an answer and a motion to dismiss/strike seeking discovery and an evidentiary hearing. Around the same time, the United States filed its motion for judgment on the pleadings. The district court denied Corral's motion and granted the government's motion with respect to the first count of the complaint. The district court dismissed the remaining counts as moot and granted Corral's motion to stay execution of the judgment. This appeal followed.
II
We first turn to the district court's grant of the government's motion for judgment on the pleadings, which we review
de novo
.
Kanter v. Barr
,
We have described a crime involving moral turpitude as "conduct that shocks the public conscience as being inherently base, vile, or depraved, and contrary to the accepted rules of morality and the duties owed between persons or to society in general."
Sanchez v. Holder
,
Corral cites to
Quintero-Salazar v. Keisler
,
III
Corral's other arguments concern his laches and selective prosecution affirmative defenses. He raised these defenses in his "Motion to Dismiss / Strike Complaint," which, as the district court recognized, was "not so much a motion to dismiss as a request for discovery and a hearing." The district court's denial of Corral's motion involved purely legal questions, so we review it de novo .
A
To establish his laches defense, Corral must show the government's lack of diligence and resulting prejudice.
Navarro v. Neal
,
Whether Corral made a willful misrepresentation or concealed a material fact is irrelevant because these factors do not relate to the ground for Corral's denaturalization. Recall that Corral's citizenship was revoked based on his failure to comply with a statutory prerequisite for naturalization-having good moral character during the five years preceding his application for citizenship until the time he took the oath of allegiance to the United States. His citizenship was not revoked for willfully mispresenting or concealing a material fact. Therefore, Corral's "evidentiary prejudice" argument fails. 1
Still, the government asks us to clarify that laches never applies in civil denaturalization actions. We are reluctant to adopt such a categorical rule in light of possible changes to criminalization standards and public mores. And we decline to do so here given that resolution of this case does not require it.
B
Corral further asserts a selective prosecution defense under equal protection standards, arguing that the government's decision to denaturalize him 17 years after his criminal conviction is suspicious based on perceived changes in executive policy.
See
United States v. Armstrong
,
Corral argues that the government targeted only a handful of child sexual abusers for denaturalization, including himself, and that "[i]t would seem to defy simple logic that in seventeen (17) years, the Government had only become aware of these five (5) individuals who had been naturalized and later convicted of felony offenses who they then chose to target." Not only is Corral's argument based on a questionable premise, namely, that the United States selectively sought to denaturalize convicted child sexual abusers in only five instances in the last 17 years, but he fails to explain how the government's decision was deliberately based on invidious criteria. Indeed, all he has shown is that the government brought denaturalization actions against some individuals who were convicted of the sexual abuse of children. Otherwise, Corral's position that a change in executive policy might have had something to do with the timing of his denaturalization proceedings, *610 alone, simply does not support a selective prosecution defense.
For these reasons, we AFFIRM the district court.
We need not address Corral's "expectational prejudice" argument raised for the first time on appeal.
See
Duncan Place Owners Assoc. v. Danze, Inc.
,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Eleazar Corral VALENZUELA, Defendant-Appellant.
- Cited By
- 7 cases
- Status
- Published