DOJ Ramps Up Historic Push to Strip Citizenship From Naturalized Americans, and Millions Are Watching Nervously
Federal prosecutors have filed 25 denaturalization complaints since late July in what advocates call the largest such campaign in U.S. history, with a memo instructing lawyers to ‘maximally pursue’ cases.
The Justice Department has dramatically escalated its effort to strip U.S. citizenship from naturalized Americans, filing 25 denaturalization complaints since July 20 alone — a pace advocates describe as the largest such push in the department's history, according to PBS NewsHour.
An internal Justice Department memo instructs government lawyers to "maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings," giving them broad discretion over who to target. The memo lays out 10 priority categories for cases, ranging from national security threats and war crimes to various forms of fraud and financial crimes, plus a catch-all category for anything prosecutors deem "sufficiently important to pursue."
A steep jump in referrals
The administration has directed Department of Homeland Security staff to refer upward of 200 denaturalization cases per month to the Justice Department, according to NBC News — a massive jump from the historical average of roughly 11 cases per year between 1990 and 2017. In one recent batch of filings, the department moved to strip citizenship from 17 naturalized Americans it described as sex offenders, fraudsters and drug dealers.
Roughly 20 million naturalized Americans now fall within the pool of people whose decades-old immigration paperwork could theoretically be revisited, and legal advocates warn that even minor, long-forgotten discrepancies in old applications could become grounds for a case.
ANY MISTAKE IN THEIR DECADES-OLD IMMIGRATION PAPERWORK COULD COST THEM THEIR CITIZENSHIP.
Legal pushback brewing
Civil rights groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice, argue the campaign faces steep legal hurdles because denaturalization cases historically require the government to meet a high evidentiary bar and can take years to litigate. Unlike criminal deportation proceedings, denaturalization cases are typically filed as civil suits, which critics say affords targeted individuals fewer procedural protections even as the stakes — loss of citizenship itself — are severe.
Attorneys expect a wave of legal challenges as more cases move through federal courts, with some expected to test how broadly the government can wield 10-plus-decade-old naturalization files. For now, the Justice Department shows no sign of slowing the pace of new filings.