In July 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) elevated denaturalization to a top enforcement priority, marking a dramatic shift in how the federal government approaches U.S. citizenship. While the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) has long authorized revocation of naturalization, historically such cases were rare and confined to extraordinary circumstances—such as involvement in genocide or espionage. From 1990 to 2017, only 305 cases were pursued, an average of eleven per year. Under the first Trump administration, however, referrals for denaturalization rose by 600 percent.
Expanding the Grounds for Denaturalization
The June 2025 DOJ memorandum identifies sweeping categories of people who may be targeted. These include anyone the DOJ deems “sufficiently important,” individuals accused of being “potential dangers to national security,” or even citizens referred “in connection with pending criminal charges.” Yet the INA itself provides only limited bases for revocation: fraud or misrepresentation in the naturalization process, affiliation with subversive organizations within five years of naturalization, conviction for naturalization fraud, dishonorable discharge from the military, or refusal to testify in specific congressional proceedings.
By extending beyond statutory limits, the DOJ risks wasting resources on cases that cannot withstand judicial scrutiny—or worse, attempting to rewrite the law by practice. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that citizenship cannot be taken away without due process, and courts have consistently required a high burden of proof: clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence in civil cases, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases.
Civil Liberties at Risk
Despite these constitutional safeguards, the DOJ’s policy carries grave risks. Because denaturalization cases are typically civil, there is no guaranteed right to legal counsel, and many individuals may never be aware that proceedings have been filed against them. Once citizenship is stripped, a person can be rendered stateless, losing access to fundamental rights and daily necessities such as employment, housing, and identification.
Alarmingly, vague terminology like “sufficiently important” or “potential national security threat” grants the government broad discretion that can easily be abused. The American Constitution Society has already warned that past litigation practices risked mistakenly revoking citizenship from individuals who committed neither crime nor fraud.
Threats to Democracy
History provides chilling lessons. Stripping citizenship was weaponized by authoritarian regimes, including Nazi Germany, and during America’s own McCarthy era. The Supreme Court has long cautioned against allowing citizenship status to rest “upon the political temper of majority thought and the stresses of the times” (Schneiderman v. United States, 1943).
If left unchecked, the DOJ’s denaturalization campaign could undermine confidence in the permanence of naturalization, discourage immigrants from pursuing citizenship, and erode civic participation. Over time, such policies risk weakening not only the rights of individuals but the very democratic institutions they are meant to protect.
