In a ruling that turned on the definition of “under the age of 18,” a federal appeals court agreed that Ramon Duarte-Ceri, who is facing deportation, had a good argument that he was indeed a U.S. citizen because he was 12 hours shy of his 18th birthday on the day his mother was naturalized as a citizen in 1991.
Judges Peter Hall and Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sent the case back to a district judge to verify Mr. Duarte-Ceri’s claim that his mother was naturalized in the morning and he that he was born at night, which would make him 17 years, 364 days and 12 hours old when she took the naturalization oath on June 14, 1991.
