Trump administration expands denaturalization drive against foreign-born U.S. citizens
Trump officials moved to strip citizenship from roughly a dozen foreign-born Americans, widening a rare fraud remedy that could affect millions of naturalized citizens.
The Justice Department widened its denaturalization campaign on Thursday, filing cases in federal courts across the country against roughly a dozen foreign-born U.S. citizens and signaling a far more aggressive use of a remedy that once surfaced only sporadically.
The targeted cases span immigrants from Bolivia, China, Colombia, Gambia, India, Iraq, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Somalia and Uzbekistan. Officials said the people named in the cases were accused of serious crimes, immigration fraud or terrorism-related ties, including a Colombian-born Catholic priest convicted of sexually assaulting a minor, a Moroccan-born man accused of al Qaeda ties, a Somali man who pleaded guilty to providing material support to al Shabaab, and a former Gambian police officer accused of war crimes. The department also moved against Manuel Rocha, the former American diplomat who admitted being a Cuban spy.
Denaturalization is a civil or criminal process in which federal lawyers ask a judge to revoke citizenship if the government proves it was obtained illegally or through fraud, including concealment on immigration applications. People who lose citizenship also lose the legal benefits attached to it and usually fall back to their prior status, often lawful permanent residency, where they can face deportation on certain criminal or immigration grounds. That makes the stakes unusually high for the roughly 24 million naturalized citizens in the United States, especially because the government is not merely targeting isolated fraud cases but building a broader enforcement pipeline.
The scale marks a sharp break from past practice. Between 1990 and 2017, the federal government filed just over 300 denaturalization cases, an average of 11 a year. NBC News reported last month that the Trump administration was targeting at least 300 foreign-born Americans for possible denaturalization, with internal guidance aiming to produce 100 to 200 potential cases a month. The Justice Department has described the effort as seeking the “highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history.”
The push gained formal backing in a June 11, 2025 memo signed by Brett A. Shumate, the chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, which told attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue” denaturalization proceedings when supported by law and evidence. In an interview with CBS News earlier this week, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said there are “a lot of individuals who are citizens who shouldn’t be,” while adding that only “a very small percentage” of naturalized citizens should worry.
Civil liberties groups say the expansion threatens due process and chills citizenship itself. The American Civil Liberties Union warned that denaturalization was becoming expansive and driven by questionable standards and proceedings, a shift that could make immigrants afraid that old application mistakes will be revisited years later and discourage lawful permanent residents from ever applying for citizenship.
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