Ethiopian national Mergia Negussie Habteyes entered the United States in 1999 as a refugee, having successfully covered up his direct involvement as a violent interrogator in makeshift political prisons during the 1977-1980 “Red Terror”.
In the late 1970s, a military coup led to a rise to power of military officers known as the “Derg”, after which supporting militias throughout Ethiopia were organized to violently suppress the rival Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP). The Derg militias carried out the suppression campaign by rounding up suspected EPRP members and supporters and then torturing, imprisoning, and executing many.
According to much later U.S. court records, Habteyes participated in the Red Terror as a tormentor who committed atrocities against EPRP suspects by beating them with belts, rods, and other objects, causing permanent scarring and injury.
In the pre-9/11 era when Habteyes applied for refugee status, he easily lied his way through his 1999 application and review process. Similarly, he lied his way through a 2000 application for a lawful permanent residence. But USCIS officials granted him legal residence in February 2005, well after 9/11 security screening reforms had been implemented.
Habteyes’ obfuscations proved so durable in gaming security screeners even in the post-9/11 era that USCIS once again failed to determine his true history when he applied for citizenship in 2007. After nearly a year of opportunity to investigate Habteyes and verify his proffered personal history, in September 2008, USCIS interviewed him in person, the indictment says. Immediately after perfunctory questions about whether he had ever tortured anyone or was involved in political persecution, the agency granted Habteyes citizenship.
It’s unclear how federal investigators of ICE Homeland Security Investigations came to know of his Red Terror history, but it was not as a result of the immigration application review processes of the ostensibly much-improved post-9/11 era. HSI agents arrested him on an August 2018 indictment.
In 2019, Habteyes pleaded guilty to immigration fraud, lying on forms and to officials. A judge sentenced Habteyes to 37 months in prison. The Department of Justice revoked his citizenship, as well.