It is recognised in US law that the government may not take away a naturalized person’s citizenship except in cases of fraud or error on a naturalization application. The Supreme Court has clearly established that unless citizenship was unlawfully procured, denaturalization is unconstitutional. However, a memo issued by the Department of Justice (DoJ) in June attempts to broaden the grounds for denaturalization, potentially putting over 24.5 million naturalized US citizens at risk.
The memo states that the current US administration has directed the DoJ’s Civil Division to “advance the administration’s policy objectives”, among which is “prioritizing denaturalization”. Under this directive, the division is to investigate individuals who either “illegally procured” or “conceal[ed] a material fact” in their naturalization applications. The text outlines 10 “categories” of priority cases, which include individuals who “pose a potential danger to national security”; who “engaged in various forms of financial fraud”, including fraud associated with the Medicaid and Medicare healthcare programmes; and “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue”.
The memo could broaden the scope of grounds previously used for denaturalization and will likely face legal challenge. Since September, the DoJ has filed denaturalization complaints against individuals for reasons such as providing false testimony and concealing identity, and for other crimes. In November, following a DoJ complaint filed in August, a US judge revoked the citizenship of a naturalized individual who had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. President Donald Trump, in a recent post on Truth Social, reaffirmed his commitment to “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquillity” and further stated, on November 30, in response to a shooting in Washington, DC, “if I have the power to do it… I would denaturalize, absolutely”.**
The DoJ memo represents a departure from 50 years of US policy between 1967 and mid-June 2017 – nearly five months into Donald Trump’s first term as president. During this period, the practice of citizenship stripping was rare and used primarily in extreme cases, such as for war criminals. In contrast, between 1906 and 1967, the US denaturalized more citizens than any other democracy. Several news and academic sources have highlighted what some see as similar motivations behind the current administration’s directive and past initiatives. It is also important to note that the DoJ memo will afford a discretion that could be much wider than in the past.
Denaturalization in the 20th Century
The original purpose of denaturalization in the US, put into force by the Naturalization Act of 1906, was to wipe out so-called “disbelievers in organized government” from society. The early cases were against political dissidents – some self-described, and some alleged socialists, anarchists and radicals – and often included journalists or labour unionists. One notable case is that of Emma Goldman, the first person to be denaturalized for her political views. Goldman was an anarchist who eventually lost her citizenship due to her activism against US involvement in the First World War. Denaturalization for political views was linked to two provisions in naturalization law: the requirement that a person have “good moral character” and that applicants be “attached to the principles of the US Constitution.”
One of the largest citizenship-stripping campaigns started in the 1940s, after the Nationality Act of 1940 gave naturalization authority to the DoJ. Once more, the primary targets were those with so-called “subversive” beliefs, particularly those with any affiliations to the Communist Party or the German American Bund. After the government denaturalized more than 22,000 people, this particular wave was halted by the Supreme Court in 1943, which declared that a person could not be denaturalized without “clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence” that they were planning for the violent overthrow of the government. This became a standard impossible to prove, and cases of denaturalization subsided. In 1967, the Court decided that denaturalization was altogether unconstitutional except in cases of fraud or error in a naturalization application, and since, there have been only a handful of cases per year.
The DoJ memo doesn’t refer to ideological views such as “communism” or “socialism”, although the policy manual for US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) states that an individual may be denaturalized “if the person becomes a member of, or affiliated with, the Communist party”. However, the first priority in the memo mentions anyone who “[poses] a potential danger to national security”, which can be broadly interpreted.
Threatening comments
In July, Trump made comments that raised questions about whether the beliefs of some naturalized individuals may put them at risk. These comments were about New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and actor Rosie O’Donnell. After US Congressman Andy Ogles threatened Mamdani, then a mayoral candidate, with a denaturalization investigation for rap lyrics Mamdani wrote in 2017 that Ogles viewed as “publicly praising” individuals convicted of supporting the militant Palestinian group Hamas, Trump said “a lot of people are saying he’s here illegally” and “we’re going to look at everything”. And the president threatened the birthright citizenship of O’Donnell, who was born in New York, saying that she “is not in the best interests of our Great Country”. Because O’Donnell is a natural-born citizen, there is no provision in US law to revoke her citizenship unless she provides her explicit consent. It’s also worth noting that Trump said he would “take a look” into the question of deporting billionaire Elon Musk, who became a naturalized citizen in 2002, after the Tesla CEO criticised the spending bill that passed into law in early July.“
Threatening denaturalization for opinions or statements, that while perhaps controversial are peaceful, reaches much further than the historical standard of believing in the “violent takeover of government” used to start a denaturalization proceeding in the past. Such threats generate a climate of fear where certain individuals and groups may be scared to voice opinions out of the threat of ending up in a denaturalization trial.
The expanded notion of ‘fraudulent acquisition’
Since 1967, fraudulent acquisition of citizenship has been the exclusive justification for denaturalization. Up until recently, this has been interpreted as a nondisclosure of information on a naturalization application that would have impacted the outcome of the application.
There has been an increasing number of investigations of fraudulent acquisition since 2008, the year that saw “Operation Janus”. This Obama-era policy targeted individuals who had been sent a deportation letter as an immigrant but had subsequently naturalized using a different name. The main driver was the digitization of records and fingerprint testing, which made it easier to identify discrepancies. In 2016, Trump expanded the operation to allow USCIS to investigate over 700,000 cases, marking the first push to “revive denaturalization”.
As scholars have argued, identifying fraud or a mistake is not always clear cut. For example, the US naturalization form asks whether a person has ever committed a crime, but does not specify what is included in its definition of a crime. It is unknown whether a crime committed in another jurisdiction that is not a crime under US law would count. This could have implications for same-sex couples or trans persons who come from countries where their status is illegal – such as in Uganda.
The June DoJ memo further expands what is considered as fraud for denaturalization to include instances of “loan fraud” or “Medicaid/Medicare fraud.” These types of fraud would likely not have previously met the standard of “willful misrepresentation” or “concealing material fact” that would have impacted the outcome of the naturalization process, since they are not related to a person’s immigration history.
Looking at denaturalization through the lens of race
While the memo does not mention race or ethnicity, some lawyers and legal scholars are concerned that, read alongside other developments in the current administration’s management of immigration, it will disproportionately affect certain minority and low-income communities.
Historically, race has been an explicit factor in immigration and denaturalization. Up until 1952, US citizenship law stated that only “white persons, persons of African nativity or descent, and descendants of races indigenous to the Western hemisphere” could be naturalized. In the 1920s, more than 50 naturalized individuals of Indian origin had their citizenship revoked after the Supreme Court decided that people from India were not “white” in “the understanding of the common man”
The DoJ memo came nearly three months after the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan men with tenuous or non-existent ties to gangs or drug cartels, and nearly two months before a Supreme Court decision that allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to use racial profiling in immigration raids in Los Angeles.
Some human rights groups and journalists have compared ICE immigration enforcement to how the US “War on Drugs” fuelled the mass incarceration of certain low-income and minority groups. As Sarah Tosh, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote in 2021, “these processes draw from a long history of targeted drug enforcement that has served to scapegoat, punish, and exclude immigrants and native-born racial minorities”.
Repeat of history or something bigger?
Unlike some European countries, the US previously had strong safeguards against denaturalization since the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling. Since the end of September, the government has filed at least thirteen denaturalization actions (exact numbers are not publicly available), 11 of these actions were filed and publicly disclosed between September 30 and January 20, 2025, the beginning of Trump’s second term.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that passed in July allocated more than $3 billion in additional funds to the DoJ to exercise the administration’s immigration priorities – such as hiring immigration judges, staffing, and investigations.
The expansion of the potential grounds for denaturalization, the upcoming Supreme Court review of birthright citizenship, and even Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno’s recently proposed legislation to ban dual citizenship mark the potential for some of the most fundamental shifts in US citizenship to date. While some have rightly made the connection between present and past denaturalization initiatives, it remains to be seen how the Justice Department will make use of the memo’s criteria for denaturalization during the rest of Trump’s mandate.
