Report: More Than 800 Immigrants Accidentally Granted Citizenship

WASHINGTON (KDKA) -- According to an internal Homeland Security audit released Monday, the U.S. government has mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud who had pending deportation orders.

CBS News reports the Homeland Security Department's inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birth dates to apply for citizenship. Such discrepancies weren't caught because their fingerprints were missing from government databases.

Join The Conversation On The KDKA Facebook Page
Stay Up To Date, Follow KDKA On Twitter

In a statement, the DHS reportedly said that an initial review of these cases suggests that some of the immigrants may have ultimately qualified for citizenship, and that the lack of digital fingerprint records does not necessarily mean they committed fraud.

The report does not identify any immigrants by name, but the audit states they were all from "special interest countries" - those that present a national security concern for the United States - or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud.

Those countries were not named.