Source: Office of United States Attorneys
Defendant currently serving sentence for attempted murder of his unborn child in 2014
CLEVELAND – A federal grand jury has returned an indictment charging a former medical doctor with naturalization fraud, for providing false answers on a U.S. citizenship application and during an in-person interview.
According to the factual allegations in the indictment, Yousif Abdulraouf Alhallaq, 46, of Canton, was born in Kuwait but was a Jordanian citizen at the time he entered the United States on an H1B visa in 2006. In 2011, Alhallaq filed an application to become a permanent resident of the United States, which was approved and granted him lawful status. Since approximately 2012, Alhallaq worked as a medical doctor in Northeast Ohio. Then, in December 2014, the defendant poisoned a victim who was pregnant with his child, in an attempt to terminate the pregnancy without her knowledge. On March 18, 2021, Alhallaq was indicted in the Stark County Court of Common Pleas and charged with one count of attempted murder and two counts of felonious assault for trying to purposely cause the termination of the victim’s pregnancy and knowingly causing serious physical harm to the victim and her unborn child. In September 2021, Alhallaq pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Before Alhallaq was indicted and sentenced in 2021, Alhallaq mailed a federal application in late 2017, Form N-400, to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. In the application he submitted “no” answers to the following questions:
- 14C – Were you ever involved in any way with killing or trying to kill someone?
- 14D – Were you ever involved in any way with badly hurting, or trying to hurt a person on purpose?
- 22 – Have you ever committed, assisted in committing, or attempted to commit a crime or offense for which you were not arrested?
In March 2018, Alhallaq continued with the process of applying for U.S. citizenship and was interviewed by an immigration officer to review the previously submitted naturalization application. Under oath, the defendant verbally confirmed answers to questions 14C, 14D, and 22 as “no” which matched those initially submitted by mail. On May 4, 2018, the defendant became a naturalized U.S. citizen during a ceremony in Stark County, Ohio.
The grand jury charges that although Alhallaq knowingly committed acts of attempted murder and felonious assault against his unborn child in 2014, he nonetheless proceeded to sign his naturalization application in 2017 and then provided verbal confirmation to an immigration official during an interview in 2018 and in both instances attested to the truthfulness of the information he provided, which resulted in being granted U.S. citizenship.
Alhallaq faces a maximum of up to 10 years in prison for naturalization fraud.
If convicted, the defendant’s sentence will be determined by the Court after a review of factors unique to this case, including the defendant’s prior criminal record, his role in the offense, and the characteristics of the violation. In all cases, the sentence will not exceed the statutory maximum, and in most cases, it will be less than the maximum.
The investigation preceding the indictment was conducted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This case is being prosecuted by Matthew W. Shepherd for the Northern District of Ohio.
An indictment is merely an allegation. The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.