Casasola

I. INTRODUCTION

Gustavo Adolfo Suchite Casasola (“Suchite”), a Guatemalan citizen, appeals his conviction and sentence for illegal reentry into the United States after removal, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326 . Suchite ehal lenges the validity of his underlying removal, contending that he is a U.S. citizen. Suchite argues that he automatically derived U.S. citizenship upon his father’s naturalization in 1997, when Suchite was fourteen. At that time, the controlling statute granted automatic derivative citizenship to foreign-born children of married parents only when both parents naturalized before the foreign-born child’s eighteenth birthday. Suchite’s mother, married to Suchite’s father at all relevant times, did not naturalize until Suchite was twenty-one. The district court, therefore, correctly ruled Suchite was not a citizen. Our law in 1997 drew a distinction between foreign-born children whose parents were legally separated, and those, like Suchite, whose parents were married. See 8 U.S.C. § 1432 (a). Had Suchite’s parents been legally separated, or had the law now in effect been in effect before Suchite turned eighteen, then he would have automatically derived…