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Revoking an immigrant’s citizenship has proven to be a costly and controversial practice over the years, but the Trump administration says hundreds of people deserve to have their citizenship stripped anyway.
USA Today reports that the plan calls for ramping up the previous rare denaturalization process as a part of a broader immigration enforcement agenda. expanding a practice President Donald Trump started in his first term.
The Justice Department has moved to revoke the citizenship of nearly 90 people since the start of 2025. By October, the government aims to file at least 250 denaturalization cases in federal courts.
Under federal law, the government can ask a judge to revoke the citizenship of someone who obtained it through fraud or misrepresentation – such as using a false identity or concealing a disqualifying criminal record during the naturalization process.
The administration is on pace to pursue more denaturalization cases than any other in recent American history. By comparison, the Buden administration brought 24 cases over four years, the Trump administration filed 102 denaturalization cases in the president’s first term, according to the DOJ.
The Trump administration says it is targeting criminals and fraudsters who should not have become citizens in the first place. It framed the campaign as an effort to prweserve the integrity of naturalization.
For decades, the government pursued only a handful of denaturalization cases each year, in part because they require significant resources, are expensive and can take years to resolve. The cases prosecutors did pursue largely targeted national security threats, affiliates of terror groups and suspected war criminals.
But since Trump returned to office, his administration has moved to expand the use of denaturalization, and agency leaders have enlisted the help of US attorneys’ offices nationwide to boost case numbers. In a social media post on July 20, the White House described the campaign as the “Largest Denaturalization Effort Ever.”
Former DOJ attorneys and immigration law experts said the cases being pursued under Trump largely don’t appear out of step with previous administrations. But they expressed concerns that the effort could divert resources from other priorities like prosecuting fraud or corruption cases. Some blasted the effort as a tactic meant to intimidate the country’s
more than 26 million naturalized citizens.
Within a week of taking office in 2025, Trump ordered “adequate resources” to be dedicated to denaturalizing some US citizens as part of his broader immigration strategy.
Months later, the DOJ issued a memo directing the agency’s civil division, which primarily handles denaturalization cases, to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings.”
As of July 22, the Justice Department has filed at least 89 denaturalization cases in federal courts, according to a DOJ official – nearly four times as many as were pursued during President Joe Biden’s term in office.
