CNN reports the U.S. Department of Justice is looking to repurpose an old anti-Nazi law to ensnare targets of the Trump administration.
The statute is part of a McCarthy-era law first established to remove communists during the “red scare” of the 1950s, but CNN reports it has primarily been used to remove war criminals. In 1979, the Justice Department established a unit that used the statute to deport hundreds of people who assisted Germany’s Nazi regime. Department head Eli Rosenbaum, also known as the “Nazi hunter”, helped the department strip citizenship from or deport 100 people.
Former president Joe Biden put Rosenbaum over a DOJ team investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine, but the Trump administration pulled that effort in what Rosenbaun described as “a very disturbing retreat from the U.S. commitment to holding accountable the perpetrators of war crimes and aggression.”
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Now Trump seeks to use Rosenbaum’s greatest weapon to target immigrants by re-defining the statute phrase “pose a potential danger to national security”.
The DOJ assured CNN the administration has no intention of abusing the statute.
“Denaturalization proceedings will only be pursued as permitted by law and supported by evidence against individuals who illegally procured or misrepresented facts in the naturalization process,” DOJ said in a statement.
However, CNN reports current and former DOJ officials, speaking anonymously, say that “beyond instructing lawyers to file as many denaturalization cases as possible,” the memo is so broad that it could allow the Justice Department to invoke vague or unsubstantiated claims to expel people.
Case Western Reserve University law professor Cassandra Burke Robertson warned CNN that the memo could give way to the Trump administration retroactively searching for missteps in the naturalization process of perceived political opponents, including student activists.
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“ … [I]t’s just flatly inconsistent with our democratic system,” Robertson said.
Hofstra University law professor Irina Manta said the administration’s tactic could have a “chilling effect” on free speech, both political and otherwise.
CNN reports Trump MAGA ally Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn) is already asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether New York City Democratic mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani—who was born in Uganda and naturalized in 2018— should be subject to denaturalization proceedings.
Read the full CNN report at this link.