DOJ files to revoke citizenship of Capuchin priest convicted of abusing minors
If the government’s case against Vazquez Ortega succeeds, he will likely be deported.
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed to revoke the citizenship of a Capuchin priest from Mexico who was convicted of sexually abusing minors while working in a parish in Washington, D.C.
If the federal government’s case against 53-year-old Fr. Urbano Vazquez Ortega succeeds, he will likely be deported. He is currently serving a 15-year sentence for sexual abuse of minors.
A Capuchin priest working in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., Vazquez Ortega was found guilty in 2019 of sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl and a 9-year-old girl at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, where he served as assistant pastor. The abuse took place in 2015 and 2016.
In 2021, while serving his sentence in the child sex abuse case, Vazquez Ortega was found guilty in a separate case of sexually abusing an adult.
That abuse, which took place in 2017, involved the inappropriate touching of a woman during confession.
Vazquez Ortega was given the maximum 180-day sentence for the misdemeanor charge, to be served consecutive to the 15-year sentence he was already serving.
The priest’s faculties were removed by the Archdiocese of Washington in 2018.
Last week, the Department of Justice announced that it had filed for the denaturalization of a number of individuals, including Vazquez Ortega.
Paul Hunker, an immigration attorney in Texas and partner at De Mott, Curtright & Armendáriz, LLP, told The Pillar that denaturalization cases must be heard before a federal judge.
“The government has to prove by clear evidence that he was not eligible for naturalization or he committed fraud in his application for naturalization,” Hunker said.
“When someone’s naturalized, they’re a citizen, and so the government needs really strong evidence to take that away.”
The Department of Justice maintains that Vazquez Ortega and the other individuals facing denaturalization cases “procured citizenship through willful misrepresentations and concealment of their crimes.”
During the naturalization process, applicants are asked if they have ever “committed, assisted in committing, or attempted to commit a crime or offense” for which they have not been arrested.
Hunker that it may sound strange to ask people this question.
But he said, if an individual is later found to have lied in response to that question, their citizenship can be revoked.
Vazquez Ortega became a naturalized citizen in 2017 – after the abuse of minors took place. While the details of his particular case are not public, it is likely that he failed to disclose these crimes when he applied for naturalization.
“If the court finds that he committed fraud in his naturalization application, they take away the citizenship. He reverts back to the status he had before that, which would be a lawful permanent resident,” Hunker explained.
“And then the government would have to institute removal proceedings to remove him from the country.”
Typically, he noted, people finish their criminal sentence and are deported after that.
The decision to see Ortega denaturalized raises questions about whether other priests convicted of crimes could lose their legal status, or their citizenship, in the United States.
According to research from the Catholic University of America, 24% of priests serving in the United States are foreign born.
An analysis of clerical fraud cases from 1963 to 2020, coauthored by Robert Warren, an assistant professor of accounting at Radford University and expert in ecclesiastical fraud, found that about 1 in 5 fraudulent priests are immigrants.
In 2020, a Polish priest in South Dakota was sentenced to 7 years and 9 months in prison on more than 60 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, and other related charges.
Last year, a priest from India pleaded guilty to stealing money from his Catholic parish in Iowa and placing it in a scam investment without consulting or informing the parish finance council.
In 2025, a Polish Capuchin friar in New York pleaded guilty to wire fraud, after federal prosecutors said the priest bilked Catholics by pretending to run fake medical clinics in Beirut, Lebanon, pretending to be a doctor, and falsely claiming direct lineage to two European royal families.
At his sentencing, the friar’s defense attorney told the court that he would “likely face deportation.”
However, not every crime committed by a foreign priest or religious will necessarily result in denaturalization.
Simply committing a crime does not cause a person to lose their naturalized citizenship. But certain crimes committed before and during the naturalization process can make an individual ineligible for naturalization, Hunker explained. And lying about previous crimes committed during the application process can result in citizenship later being revoked.
Given the strict criteria for an individual to lose his or her citizenship, Hunker told The Pillar that he does not expect to see the denaturalization of priests and religious become a widespread phenomenon.
“I expect to see very few priests and religious [facing denaturalization],” he said.
Hunker said in the clients he represents, he is far more likely to see cases of priests and religious running into problems with paperwork or deadlines in obtaining or extending their legal status.
He added that while cases of priests committing crimes may make headlines, it would be a mistake to think of foreign priests serving in the United States as more likely than others to commit crimes.
“They’re actually critically important for our country,” he said.
“When you have tens of thousands of priests and religious, it stands to reason that some of them are going to do bad things. It’s the nature of reality. Unfortunately, people sin and err, and being a priest or religious doesn’t protect you from that,” Hunker said.
In his view, though, there are also many “good, holy, hardworking, priests and religious trying to serve their communities.”
“At my firm, we represent a fair number of priests and religious. And we’re happy to do that because we’re helping the orders and helping priests be able to minister.”
Praying for justice (whatever it may be in this situation).
Also, one of the paragraphs has a missing ending?
“He added that while cases of priests committing crimes may make headlines, it would be a mistake to think of foreign priests serving in the United States as statistically”
Humanely deporting people not here legally for crimes against children or adults is absolutely important and justified. If people committed these crimes before they became naturalized US citizens, like the priest above, they need to be deported as well, per my opinion. My objection to ICE and anyone who supports ICE is not about their deportation of violent criminals. My objection to ICE is for killing American citizens, murdered in cold blood, in the streets, captured for the world to see. The kid ICE killed in Houston recently was here on a tourist visa and already had a plane ticket home. They have killed others here legally as well. They have separated many families with children appearing by themselves before a judge. Do you hear me? Are you tracking with me? If your politics, wealth, status, ideology, prevent you from seeing evil where evil exists, well, may God have mercy on your souls.