but let say - i'm going all the way do federal court - will that mistake potentially help me - like sort of double jeopardy?
That depends on what you fight in federal court. Here are two scenarios:
(1st scenario) If USCIS place you in removal and and a federal court judge ask the deportation to be cancelled,
then you will get a clean slate and USCIS can not deport you anymore for the same offense
(sort of like double jeopardy in a crminal court) and THUS your can safely apply for citizenship agains and you
should be eligible since you do not have a deportable offense anymore and your offense is not a permanent bar to citizenship.
This is most ideal outcome for yout But to achieve this, you have to wait for USCIS to deport
you first and there is no guarrantee you can win and in fact deportation will be a very likely issue if USCIS really start this
proceeding. Of course you have nothing more to lose either except legal fees since it is USCIS not you who will initiate deportation and you have no choice.
(2nd scanario) You will have a dilemma if USCIS just deny your citizenshoip but decide not to deport you.
Then what would you do? You can file a lawsuit/appeal aganist USCIS for not giving citizenship but this risk is too high. USCIS will think they already do you a favor buy not deporting you and will be pissed if you sue them for
not apporving your N-400 and thus they will initiate deportation which they do not want to do in the first place.
So you should file a lawsuit against USCIS only if you think you are not deportable again based on your leagl
research. Therefore if you are not confident you are not deportable. don't do it. Just live with GC you still
have ---- but you do need to assess the likelihood what USCIS will do when you next time renew your GC.
(heck we only need to renew several times in our life).
Maybe you can live with just GC. A shadow may hang over you for the rest of your life about possible deportation
becaus ethsi issue may be raised again and again for every 10 years you renew your GC but you can try hard to
get over such feeling. Just think it as another risk in life. Even if we get citizenship we can always die prematurely
due to car acciddents, cancer etc which are worse than deportation but we don't think about such bad things
every days.
So I suggest you first wait for sometime and see what kinds of letter you will receive soon from USCIS
and then decide what to do