LSO Client Wins in Federal Court

Arnold Giammarco, a deported Connecticut resident recently subpoenaed by the Connecticut Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing on April 4, won a victory in federal court. Judge Vanessa L. Bryant of the U.S. District Court issued a thirty-page opinion on March 17, 2016, holding that the Department of Homeland Security must adjudicate the application for naturalization that Giammarco submitted in 1982. The government advanced numerous arguments as to why it may continue to ignore Giammarco’s application after more than three decades, but Judge Bryant rejected each of the government’s contentions.

Giammarco is represented by law students and their supervising attorneys in the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy, Veterans Legal Services, and Criminal Justice Clinics, part of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School.

“At the time Plaintiff submitted his application, February 3, 1982, the INS, a federal agency, was under the general obligation to render a conclusion within a ‘reasonable time,’” reasoned Judge Bryant. “A three-decade long delay exceeds any rule of reason, particularly that an application for citizenship touches upon the ‘health and welfare’ of the application.”

Arnold Giammarco moved legally to the United States from Italy with his parents in 1960, when he was 4 years old, and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. Giammarco enlisted in the U.S. Army as a teenager, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, an Italian immigrant who fought for the United States in World War I, and later joined the Connecticut Army National Guard. In 1982, he submitted an application for naturalization and attended an interview. In the late 1990s, Giammarco’s marriage fell apart and he fell into a deep depression. He became addicted to drugs and received a series of non-violent convictions. After 2008, Giammarco became sober, remarried, started a family, and secured a full-time job. In 2012, during deportation proceedings stemming from a series of non-violent convictions, Giammarco discovered that the agency had “nonfiled” his application and in 2013 he filed suit, asking the court to compel CIS to adjudicate his application. Yesterday, Judge Bryant granted Giammarco’s motion for summary judgment.

“My husband served this country, applied to become a citizen, and I am so happy that he will now receive the decision for which he has waited 34 years,” said Sharon Giammarco, Mr. Giammarco’s wife who lives in Connecticut. “This gives me hope that one day I won’t have to tell our daughter why her dad can’t attend her parent teacher conferences and why she shouldn’t save a piece of birthday cake for him this year.”

“When DHS receives a naturalization application, it must decide whether to give an individual one of the world’s great privileges: U.S. citizenship,” said Aaron Korthuis ’17, a law student who represents Giammarco. “We hope that, after Judge Bryant’s careful and detailed opinion, DHS will take that responsibility more seriously.”

Memorandum of Decision Granting Plaintiff's Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment (issued March 17, 2016)