{"id":42324,"date":"2026-04-25T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=42324"},"modified":"2026-04-25T08:15:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T15:15:54","slug":"justice-departments-effort-to-strip-citizenship-from-naturalized-americans-could-face-widespread-judicial-pushback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/justice-departments-effort-to-strip-citizenship-from-naturalized-americans-could-face-widespread-judicial-pushback\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Department\u2019s effort to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans could face widespread judicial pushback"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cassandra Burke Robertson<\/a>, Case Western Reserve University<\/a><\/em> and Irina D. Manta<\/a>, Hofstra University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Justice Department has identified 384 foreign-born Americans whose citizenship it wants to revoke as \u201cthe first wave\u201d of such measures, according to recent reporting by The New York Times<\/a>. These cases are being assigned to prosecutors in 39 U.S. attorney\u2019s offices across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The administration has ordered Department of Homeland Security staffers to refer upward of 200 denaturalization cases per month to the Justice Department as part of its crackdown on immigration, compared to an average of 11 cases per year<\/a> between 1990 and 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This shift comes as the Justice Department faces a severe staffing crisis, having lost nearly 1,000 assistant U.S. attorneys<\/a> in resignations and firings. The strategy of distributing cases to regional offices appears designed both to increase capacity and to work around the expertise gap created by staff departures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we document in recent research, denaturalization risks becoming a tool of political control<\/a> and intimidation. The lack of any statute of limitations in civil denaturalization gives prosecutors what the Supreme Court in 2017, in Maslenjak v. United States<\/a>, warned against: \u201cnearly limitless leverage\u201d over naturalized citizens \u2013 creating permanent vulnerability for over 20 million naturalized Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A brief history<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Denaturalization is different from deportation, which removes noncitizens from the country. With civil denaturalization, the government files a lawsuit to strip people\u2019s U.S. citizenship<\/a> after they have become citizens, turning them back into noncitizens who can then be deported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government can only do this<\/a> in specific situations. It must prove someone \u201cillegally procured<\/a>\u201d citizenship by not meeting the requirements, or that they lied or hid important facts during the citizenship process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration\u2019s \u201cmaximal\u201d enforcement approach, outlined in a June 2025 Justice Department memo<\/a>, means pursuing any case where evidence might support taking away citizenship, regardless of priority level or strength of evidence. As our earlier research documented, this has already led to cases like that of Baljinder Singh, whose citizenship was revoked based on a name discrepancy<\/a> that could easily have resulted from a translator\u2019s error rather than intentional fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of American history, taking away citizenship has been rare. But it increased dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s during the Red Scare period<\/a> characterized by intense suspicion of communism. The United States government targeted people it thought were communists or Nazi supporters. Between 1907 and 1967, over 22,000<\/a> Americans lost their citizenship this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything changed in 1967 when the Supreme Court decided Afroyim v. Rusk<\/a>. The court said the government usually cannot take away citizenship without the person\u2019s consent. It left open only cases involving fraud during the citizenship process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After this decision, denaturalization became extremely rare. From 1968 to 2013, fewer than 150 people lost their citizenship<\/a>, mostly war criminals who had hidden their past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Sen. Joseph McCarthy appears at a March 1950 hearing on his charges of communist infiltration at the State Department. AP Photo\/Herbert K. White<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How the process works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In criminal lawsuits, defendants get free lawyers if they can\u2019t afford one. They get jury trials. The government must prove guilt \u201cbeyond a reasonable doubt\u201d \u2013 the highest standard of proof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in most denaturalization cases, the government files a civil suit, where none of these protections exist<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People facing denaturalization get no free lawyer, meaning poor defendants often face the government alone. There\u2019s no jury trial \u2013 just a judge deciding whether someone deserves to remain American. The burden of proof is lower \u2013 \u201cclear and convincing evidence\u201d instead of \u201cbeyond a reasonable doubt.\u201d Most important, there\u2019s no time limit, so the government can go back decades to build cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As law professors<\/a> who study citizenship<\/a>, we believe this system violates basic constitutional rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court has called citizenship a fundamental right. Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1958 described it as the \u201cright to have rights<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our reading of the law, taking away such a fundamental right through civil procedures that lack basic constitutional protection \u2013 no right to counsel for those who can\u2019t afford it, no jury trial, and a lower burden of proof \u2013 seems to violate the due process of law<\/a> required by the Constitution when the government seeks to deprive someone of their rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bigger problem is what citizenship-stripping policy does to democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the government can strip citizenship from naturalized Americans for decades-old conduct through civil procedures with minimal due process protection \u2013 pursuing cases based on evidence that might not meet criminal standards \u2013 it undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide. This creates a system where naturalized citizens face ongoing vulnerability<\/a> that can last their entire lives, potentially chilling their full participation in American democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Justice Department memo<\/a> establishes 10 priority categories for denaturalization cases. They range from national security threats and war crimes to various forms of fraud, financial crimes and, most importantly, any other cases it deems \u201csufficiently important to pursue.\u201d This \u201cmaximal enforcement\u201d approach means pursuing not just clear cases of fraud, but also any case where evidence might support taking away citizenship, no matter how weak or old the evidence is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This creates fear throughout immigrant communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 20 million naturalized Americans<\/a> now must worry that any mistake in their decades-old immigration paperwork could cost them their citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2-tier system<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This policy effectively creates two different types of American citizens. Native-born Americans never have to worry about losing their citizenship, no matter what they do. But naturalized Americans face ongoing vulnerability that can last their entire lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has already happened. A woman who became a naturalized citizen in 2007 helped her boss with paperwork that was later used in fraud<\/a>. She cooperated with the FBI investigation, was characterized by prosecutors as only a \u201cminimal participant,\u201d completed her sentence, and still faced losing her citizenship decades later because she didn\u2019t report the crime on her citizenship application \u2013 even though she hadn\u2019t been charged at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A woman receives a U.S. flag after passing her citizenship interview in Newark, N.J., on May 25, 2016. AP Photo\/Julio Cortez<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Justice Department\u2019s directive to \u201cmaximally pursue\u201d cases across 10 broad categories \u2013 combined with the first Trump administration\u2019s efforts to review over 700,000 naturalization files<\/a> \u2013 represents an unprecedented expansion of denaturalization efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration\u2019s strategy of distributing denaturalization cases across 39 U.S. attorney\u2019s offices \u2013 many now staffed by less-experienced prosecutors<\/a> handling unfamiliar constitutional terrain \u2013 may prove counterproductive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These cases will come before dozens of federal judges, creating opportunities for multiple courts to rule against the policy. This pattern has already been seen with the administration\u2019s detention policy: Federal courts have systematically rejected<\/a> the administration\u2019s attempt to drastically expand immigrant detention without hearings, with immigrants prevailing in 350 out of 362 cases decided by over 160 judges nationwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Denaturalization cases raise even more serious constitutional concerns and could face similar widespread judicial pushback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Supreme Court, in Afroyim v. Rusk<\/a>, was focused on protecting existing citizens from losing their citizenship. The constitutional principle behind that decision \u2013 that citizenship is a fundamental right which can\u2019t be arbitrarily taken away by whoever happens to be in power \u2013 applies equally to how the government handles denaturalization cases today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration\u2019s directive, combined with court procedures that lack basic constitutional protections, risks creating a system that the Afroyim v. Rusk decision sought to prevent \u2013 one where, as the Supreme Court said, \u201cA group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an updated version of an article originally published on July 10, 2025<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cassandra Burke Robertson<\/a>, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics, Case Western Reserve University<\/a><\/em> and Irina D. Manta<\/a>, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law, Hofstra University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cassandra Burke Robertson, Case Western Reserve University and Irina D. Manta, Hofstra University The Justice Department has identified 384 foreign-born Americans whose citizenship it wants to revoke as \u201cthe first wave\u201d of such measures, according to recent reporting by The New York Times. These cases are being assigned to prosecutors in 39 U.S. attorney\u2019s offices […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":42325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46,295,10,296,36,4,38],"tags":[473,5177,537,885,891,886,860,7817,16636,1605,12374,1602,420,1586,1666],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42326,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42324\/revisions\/42326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}