JULY 1, 2025
WASHINGTON DC, UNITED STATES – JUNE 27: United States President Donald Trump (not seen) held a press conference with United States Attorney General Pam Bondi and United States Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (not seen) at the White House Press Briefing room in Washington DC., United States on June 27, 2025. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images) (Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images)
A staggering Justice Department memo reveals that the Trump administration intends to ramp up denaturalizations — and broaden the criteria that’s used to determine if a naturalized citizen’s citizenship could be stripped away.
Though only a handful of people faced the process in the ’90s and ’00s, Trump’s first administration saw the creation of a division dedicated to denaturalizing people who committed certain crimes, such as terrorists or sex offenders. But now, according to the June 11 DOJ memo, the administration intends to widen the pool of eligible individuals, including, for example, those who’ve fraudulently used government programs like the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program, and those who’ve committed fraud against people and corporations. And the Trump administration says it won’t be stopping there.
“These categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance,” the memo adds.
That’s highly concerning, immigration experts warn, and could lead to the administration targeting a wide swath of U.S. citizens, given how amorphous its requirements are. The DOJ and White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“An expansion has the potential to make more people vulnerable,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told HuffPost.
Trump Has Long Wanted To Expand The Use Of Denaturalization.
About 25 million people in the U.S. are naturalized citizens, or immigrants who have completed the legal steps to become U.S. citizens.
Between 1990 and 2017, there were roughly 11 denaturalization cases on an annual basis, an indication of how uncommon it was.
This figure increased some during the Obama administration, and it grew during the first Trump administration, too.
According to a database from Irina Manta, a law professor at Hofstra University, there were 168 denaturalization cases being weighed in the courts during the first Trump administration and 64 cases during the Biden administration, USA Today reported.
In 2020, Trump’s Justice Department opened a division dedicated to denaturalization, citing a “growing number of referrals anticipated from law enforcement agencies.”
Previously, denaturalization had been used at a larger scale between 1907 and 1967 when an estimated 22,000 people saw their citizenship revoked, including for political reasons that emerged during the McCarthy era and its persecution of suspected communists.
These Policies Could Give The Administration Dangerously ‘Wide Discretion.’
Steve Lubet, professor emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, told NPR that the agency’s guidance gives officials “wide discretion” in determining who it wants to go after. While the process historically focused on people who had lied about their background to obtain U.S. citizenship, the new memo has much broader criteria.
“Many of the categories are so vague as to be meaningless. It isn’t even clear that they relate to fraudulent procurement, as opposed to post-naturalization conduct,” Lubet told NPR.
Immigration advocates emphasize that this could result in the administration using a much larger range of reasons to scrutinize a person’s citizenship. Already, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has called for New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to lose his U.S. citizenship over rap lyrics he released in 2017. (When asked about the matter on Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she wasn’t familiar with Ogles’ claims but added if they were true, they should be investigated.)
This dynamic has been evident in the targeting of other legal immigrants as well: The Trump administration has sought to revoke the visas of multiple students, including some who’ve spoken out against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, arguing that these statements consist of support for terrorists or antisemitic conduct.
The DOJ memo also states that naturalized citizens will face civil proceedings, another provision that’s prompted legal experts to sound the alarm. In civil cases, defendants aren’t guaranteed access to legal counsel.
“In order to protect the due process rights of persons facing a denaturalization proceeding it will be important for federal judges to appoint counsel to represent them in court,” Ingrid Eagly, a UCLA law professor and co-director of the Criminal Justice Program, told HuffPost.
Courtesy/Source: HuffPost
