Trump and senior officials in his administration have raised the prospect of stripping citizenship from Elon Musk after the tech mogul\u2019s feud with the president, as well as New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Both are naturalized citizens. The president even said he\u2019s giving \u201cserious consideration\u201d to revoking citizenship of US-born comedian Rosie O\u2019Donnell, who lives in Ireland and is an outspoken critic of the administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDenaturalization has always been in the books. It\u2019s always been a tool of enforcement that the government had for years,\u201d said Patricia Corrales, an attorney who prosecuted denaturalization cases in the Justice Department under the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. \u201cBut the difference between denaturalization under Trump\u2019s administrations and prior administrations is the priority that they place on the kind of denaturalization cases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Denaturalization remains extremely rare, but the number of cases filed in court sharply increased during Trump\u2019s first term. At least 90 civil and criminal cases were filed in 2018, more than twice the average number of cases during the Bush and Obama administrations. Among those, nearly twice as many civil cases, which are easier to win in court, were filed in 2018 than in any year under Obama, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The push to denaturalize under Trump even surpassed previous record years in 2001 and 2002, when a federal court ruled officials could no longer use administrative methods for stripping someone of citizenship. Previous spikes in denaturalization prosecutions, notably under Bush and Obama, focused on individuals who committed violent crimes or used false identities to acquire citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The DOJ has always enjoyed discretionary powers in choosing who to investigate, but the new directive on how to prioritize new cases goes well beyond the scope of what previous administrations pursued, said Margy O\u2019Herron, a former senior advisor to President Joe Biden on immigration and senior counsel who oversaw immigration related cases at the Justice Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe lack of focused priorities allows the government to target any naturalized citizen it decides it doesn\u2019t like,\u201d O\u2019Herron said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics contend that using denaturalization law in this manner could end up serving political ends and keeping potential newcomers from pursuing US citizenship at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe idea that naturalization could become a tool to threaten people with, to say that you\u2019re not American like anybody else, I think it eats at the heart of what it means to be an American,\u201d said Rep.\u00a0Pramila Jayapal\u00a0(D-Wash.), who is a naturalized citizen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New Priorities In March, more than five years after the Houston grandmother pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return, prosecutors asked a court to strip her of her citizenship. DOJ is now seeking to strip her of citizenship for allegedly covering up that she had filed a false tax return, even though at the time she hadn\u2019t been charged with that crime. Ben\u2019s federal public defender and her family declined to comment, citing her upcoming trial in Houston. Legal Standards Groups like the Immigrant Defense Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have told attorneys to take note of their clients\u2019 citizenship status, as well as when they acquired citizenship, before considering how to plead to new charges that could open them up to denaturalization. Legal Standards Civil denaturalization, which DOJ prosecutors were directed to expand, has no statute of limitations and doesn\u2019t involve a jury trial. Defendants don\u2019t have the right to an attorney and the government\u2019s standard of proof is slightly lower than that in a criminal case\u2013 \u201cclear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt.\u201d Expanded scope, guardrails Critics say the new policies open the door to pursue cases for political reasons, based on provisions that were meant to screen out those with ties to anti-government groups or terror organizations. Last month, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to open a civil denaturalization case against Mamdani on the grounds that he lied while going through the naturalization process. \u201cIf Mr. Mamdani concealed relevant associations, that concealment may constitute a material misrepresentation sufficient to support denaturalization under federal law,\u201d Ogles wrote. Those kinds of affiliations were the basis of mass denaturalizations in the first half of the 20th century, when some 22,000 people were stripped of citizenship between 1907 and 1967. Courts have curtailed those practices since. In 2001 a federal injunction stripped immigration officials of the power to denaturalize someone administratively, and in 2017 the Supreme Court ruled minor facts that were misrepresented by citizenship applicants couldn\u2019t be the basis for denaturalization prosecutions. Because denaturalization is so important, because it takes away someone\u2019s citizenship, I would hope that the courts, if faced with issues, would make sure that the statutory requirements are met before someone is actually denaturalized,\u201d he said. With this administration, the point is not necessarily to denaturalize as many people as possible. That might be the underlying goal, but the bigger goal here is the chilling effect that it has on naturalization,\u201d Taufa said. \u201cPeople think that if I just don\u2019t come forward, I just sort of, stay back, then I\u2019m not going to be at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The extraordinary step of stripping naturalized Americans of their citizenship used to be reserved for individuals who turned out to be war criminals, genocide perpetrators, threats to national security, violent felons or, during the Cold War, communists. But under President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, something as mundane as under-reporting income on a tax return could mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/images-43.jpeg?fit=554%2C554&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15763,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15762\/revisions\/15763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/images-455127990608728953209.jpg?resize=676%2C453\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
In April, before the new DOJ guidelines came out, Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a web portal to track criminal proceedings against naturalized citizens they say hid crimes that would have barred them from obtaining citizenship.
It lists nine people who were convicted of child sexual abuse, a sex trafficker, a war criminal, and a Nigerian man who took part in an $80 million international scam. All lost their bids to gain citizenship or were retroactively denaturalized.
It didn\u2019t list Vanessa Ben.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ben, who worked as an accountant, had gone through a years-long process to obtain citizenship, culminating in a series of interviews with immigration officials in 2017 and 2018 where she was grilled to determine whether she met the standard of being of \u201cgood moral character.\u201d
Like the nearly 8 million other people naturalized in the past decade, Ben was asked broad questions, including whether she had ever committed a crime, even one she was never charged with. According to court documents, she answered \u201cno,\u201d and was granted citizenship soon after.
Then, in 2019, Ben was charged with tax fraud. She pleaded guilty to filing a fraudulent tax return before she became a citizen; she had underreported income and ended up with a $7,712 refund. She agreed to pay the IRS a fine, and was sentenced to 12 months in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/images-44352088721030390285.jpg?resize=600%2C400\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Determining why denaturalization cases are pursued can be difficult because many cases are filed under seal in court. But pursuing cases over relatively minor tax fraud and other lesser, non-violent crimes is exceptionally rare, said former officials and attorneys who have defended clients in denaturalization cases.
DOJ spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre maintained that denaturalization \u201cwill only be pursued as permitted by law and supported by evidence against individuals who illegally procured or misrepresented facts in the naturalization process.\u201d
\u201cThis Department of Justice is committed to maintaining the integrity of the naturalization program,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cThose who gain citizenship through unlawful means and endanger our national security will not maintain the benefits of being an American citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Citizens can be denaturalized in a civil case under 8 USC 1451, which deals with \u201cconcealment\u201d or \u201cwillful misrepresentation\u201d of a \u201cmaterial fact\u201d that would have otherwise precluded someone from becoming a citizen. This law also allows for stripping someone of citizenship if, within five years of being naturalized, they become affiliated with a terrorist group.
Officials can also use 18 USC 1425, which makes it a criminal offense to acquire or attempt to acquire citizenship by lying about a material fact. Individuals must be charged within 10 years of filing the form or attending the interview where they lied about one of these material facts. They get a jury trial, in which the government must prove its case \u201cbeyond a reasonable doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Corrales, the attorney and former prosecutor, said clients are worried that things as simple as a traffic ticket could upend their lives in the US.
\u201cThe most important advice I can offer your readers, whether naturalized citizens or any other immigrant status, is to seek the advice of an experienced immigration attorney before pleading to any charges,\u201d said Gintare Grigaite, an attorney who has successfully defended such denaturalization cases in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Citizens can be denaturalized in a civil case under 8 USC 1451, which deals with \u201cconcealment\u201d or \u201cwillful misrepresentation\u201d of a \u201cmaterial fact\u201d that would have otherwise precluded someone from becoming a citizen. This law also allows for stripping someone of citizenship if, within five years of being naturalized, they become affiliated with a terrorist group.
Officials can also use 18 USC 1425, which makes it a criminal offense to acquire or attempt to acquire citizenship by lying about a material fact. Individuals must be charged within 10 years of filing the form or attending the interview where they lied about one of these material facts. They get a jury trial, in which the government must prove its case \u201cbeyond a reasonable doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some cases, the children or spouses of someone who loses their citizenship can also be denaturalized. Individuals who naturalized because they served in the US military can also lose their citizenship if they are found to be violating these provisions within five years after they became citizens.
\u201cWe have used denaturalization very sparingly over the years, largely in cases of war criminals,\u201d said Blas Nu\u00f1ez-Neto, a top border adviser under Biden. \u201cAny kind of concerted push to strip people of their citizenship at scale would really be ahistorical, and concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congress provided the Trump administration with more than $150 billion for immigration enforcement and border security earlier this month. Though the funding doesn\u2019t specifically go toward denaturalization, agency leaders could draw from more generic areas, including a $10 billion allocation for DHS to secure borders.
\u201cThe massive infusion of resources could impact and scale up a practice that was used very rarely,\u201d said Andrea Flores, a National Security Council immigration adviser under Biden and a former Senate aide.
Trump has a playbook to follow from his first term, when he launched a dedicated section in the DOJ for denaturalization. He also directed the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security to supercharge an Obama-era initiative called Operation Janus to root out fraud in past citizenship applications. Around 315,000 people were investigated for allegedly using false identities to acquire citizenship, but only around 100 cases were filed in court, a reflection of the resources needed to prosecute such cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Corrales, the former DOJ prosecutor, cited the citizenship application\u2019s question of whether applicants were involved in groups focused on subverting governments.
\u201cIf you were in a gang in El Salvador and you were creating havoc against your own government, then you should have said yes to that, right?\u201d she said. \u201cEven if you\u2019re here in the United States, even if you\u2019ve been a good boy\u2026Well, that would be a basis to denaturalize you.\u201d
Leading conservative voices, including Mike Davis, co-founder of the Article III Project, have called for denaturalizing individuals, including journalists and protesters, for their statements allegedly showing support for Hamas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mamdani became a US citizen in 2018. In a 2017 song, he spoke in favor of five men convicted of financing Hamas whose trial has been criticized by groups like Human Rights Watch.
The song was uncovered by Canary Mission, an anonymous group that has put together a database of academics and other personalities it says espoused anti-semitic views. At a trial in Boston this month challenging deportations of students over anti-semitic views, the DHS admitted it was consulting the group\u2019s database as part of its effort to identify subjects to investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Denaturalizing individuals based on such affiliations would still need to be done in court, said Matthew Hoppock, an attorney with Hoppock Law Firm, LLC who has defended clients in such cases. \u201cThere\u2019s no membership book or oath ceremony or something to be a member. So, the government has to prove these cases, by clear unequivocal and convincing evidence, the standard,\u201d Hoppock said.
Federal courts will serve as an important bulwark against overzealous denaturalization cases, retired immigration law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlthough you might have more investigations started,\u201d he added, \u201cI don\u2019t know how many more people will actually be denaturalized.\u201d
The long duration of cases will make it hard to assess the administration\u2019s success rate for years to come. For now, Trump\u2019s critics on Capitol Hill are attempting to serve as a check on the denaturalization efforts. Jayapal, the Washington congresswoman, said Democrats are pushing DOJ for transparency on its plans.
Regardless of what the administration is able to accomplish, the threat of mass denaturalization might have the intended effect of curtailing political activities, said Elizabeth Taufa, senior policy attorney and strategist at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n