U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference at a NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025. REUTERS Yves Herman
On Monday, the Justice Department announced that it will take action to revoke citizenship from 17 people across the country, which CNN reports is an "unprecedented" escalation in President Donald Trump’s push to target naturalized citizens.
“Since President Donald Trump returned to office, his administration has doubled down on its denaturalization campaign, targeting foreign-born American citizens whom it accuses of fraudulently obtaining US citizenship,” CNN explains. “Denaturalization – the process of revoking citizenship from a naturalized US citizen – is rare and can only occur in federal court. Historically, the U.S. revoked citizenship for a range of reasons, from lying about a person’s date of arrival, age or marital status to political reasons.”
While under the Biden Administration, the Justice Department filed only 24 denaturalization cases over the entire term, the Trump Administration outpaced that in just one year, in May alone moving to denaturalize a dozen citizens.
“Gaining U.S. citizenship is a privilege and under the steadfast leadership of President Trump, this Department of Justice maintains a zero-tolerance policy for the abuse of this process,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a statement on the latest effort. The new denaturalization cases, according to the government, are based on allegations ranging from immigration fraud to money laundering to sexual abuse.
Per CBS News, “In federal court complaints filed across the country in recent days, Justice Department officials argued that the individuals concealed their criminal activity when they applied for U.S. citizenship or were otherwise ineligible to be naturalized, including because they lacked a 'good moral character,' one of the requirements in the naturalization process.”
The White House’s latest push represents the largest single denaturalization effort in U.S. history. According to CBS News, “The denaturalization process allows the targeted citizens to challenge the government's filings to try to retain their citizenship. If U.S. citizens are denaturalized, they return to their prior immigration status, typically as permanent U.S. residents, and lose all the legal benefits of American citizenship, including protection from deportation.”
According to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the administration “will continue to use every lawful avenue to denaturalize and remove aliens.”
As NPR reports, however, this can be more difficult than the administration’s rhetoric may suggest.
"These are cases in which the law is pretty clear that people are entitled to due process,” said Daniel Kanstroom, professor of law at Boston College who specializes in immigration. “They're entitled to be heard by a federal judge, not just an immigration judge. So the protections in place for people facing denaturalization are pretty robust.”
Other legal experts have raised concerns about the lack of legal representation for some of the accused, or that the denaturalization process could be leveraged to stifle speech.
"The denaturalization efforts are an attempt to suppress the political speech of naturalized citizens," said Cassandra Robertson, law professor at Case Western Reserve University. "Although the cases that have been brought first are maybe people who've committed some pretty bad crimes, the government's rhetoric is certainly not limited to that."