Milagros Marileisis Acosta Torres

Convicted and denaturalized. Acosta Torres was convicted in 2020 in the Southern District of Florida for her role in laundering proceeds of a casino fraud and was sentenced to six months in prison with nearly $150,000 in restitution; on October 14, 2026, a federal court revoked her U.S. citizenship by consent judgment in a civil denaturalization action.

Introduction

Milagros Marileisis Acosta Torres, a native of Cuba, is a former naturalized U.S. citizen whose citizenship was revoked by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on October 14, 2026, which held that she illegally procured naturalization . The Justice Department announced the revocation on October 21, 2026, in the same release as the denaturalization of Vivian Chike Obichere, presenting both as products of its denaturalization campaign against people who concealed criminal histories when they naturalized . Her path to denaturalization ran through a tribal-casino fraud and a false answer on her 2015 naturalization paperwork .

Background Information

Acosta Torres naturalized in 2015. Before that, per the Justice Department, she was part of a conspiracy to defraud a tribal casino in Florida in which her husband and several others stole millions of dollars from the casino by creating false credit vouchers . Her own role was on the money side of the scheme: she engaged in various financial transactions involving the stolen proceeds to disguise the fact that the money came from fraud and to avoid the transaction-reporting requirements imposed by federal and state law .

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

The act that unraveled her citizenship was her answer during the naturalization process. On her application and in her 2015 interview, Acosta Torres claimed she had never committed a crime or offense for which she had not been arrested — which the government says was false, because she had conspired to commit money laundering . She was convicted of that crime in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in 2020 and sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $150,000 in restitution . That conviction made the 2015 “no crimes” answer a material concealment, and it became the basis for the denaturalization suit filed years later .

Public Reaction and Consequences

On June 8, 2026, the department filed a denaturalization complaint against Acosta Torres; on October 13, the parties filed a joint motion for entry of a consent judgment revoking her naturalization; and the following day, October 14, the court issued the judgment revoking her citizenship . Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Civil Division used the paired announcements to argue that “Securing denaturalization is the final step to strip citizenship from those who conceal crimes or defraud the American people” . The consent-judgment route meant the case ended by agreement rather than a contested trial, six years after her criminal conviction .

Current Status

Acosta Torres’s naturalization was vacated by the October 14, 2026 judgment, so she is no longer a U.S. citizen . She has already served the criminal side of the underlying conduct — the six-month sentence and the restitution obligation — and the denaturalization judgment now sits on top of that record . The department’s release does not describe any new criminal charges or removal proceedings against her .

Impact on Their Career/Life

The case shows how an old conviction can follow a naturalized citizen back to the oath: a 2015 concealment, a 2020 conviction for laundering casino-fraud proceeds, and a 2026 consent judgment that undid the citizenship itself. For the DOJ, Acosta Torres is the second half of a two-for-one announcement meant to advertise that naturalization applications are treated as sworn representations — and that lying on them, even about a case already resolved, can cost the citizenship decades later.

Sources

• DOJ Office of Public Affairs, “Trump Administration Denaturalizes Two People Who Gained U.S. Citizenship by Concealing Criminal Activity,” October 21, 2026 — source