Deportations: Citizens could be next

Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House

In his second term, Trump is turning denaturalization into a "political weapon"

(Image credit: onnie Cash / UPI / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

published 15 July 2025

President Trump "is coming for your citizenship," said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. The Department of Justice recently issued a memo telling its lawyers that the president has ordered them to "maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings" against foreign-born U.S. citizens accused of crimes. Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles publicly called for the administration to deport New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim immigrant and naturalized citizen, calling him a "communist" and terrorist sympathizer; Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that these allegations "should be investigated." Revoking citizenship "sounds like crazy talk," but federal law allows the government to denaturalize anyone who lied when applying for citizenship. The DOJ is now expanding that category to include citizens who are gang members and national security threats. In defiance of the 14th Amendment, Trump has already issued an executive order revoking birthright citizenship, and says he will seek to deport "bad people" who were born in the U.S. "We ought to get them the hell out of here, too," he said.

From 1967 to the 2010s, denaturalization proceedings were usually reserved for a handful of "naturalized Americans with undisclosed Nazi pasts," said Chad de Guzman in Time. That changed under the first Trump administration, which scrutinized the applications of 700,000 naturalized citizens and opened denaturalization proceedings against 168—more than any other modern president. In his second term, Trump is turning denaturalization into a "political weapon," said Gil Guerra in The Dispatch. The "broad enforcement language" in the DOJ memo "raises the possibility that a traffic stop, an arrest during a protest, or a social media post" could get one of America's 24.5 million naturalized citizens shipped to South Sudan. Trump has even said he would "take a look at" deporting ally turned enemy Elon Musk.

Native-born citizens should be worried, too, said Greg Grandin in The New York Times. Trump and top adviser Stephen Miller have made it very clear they believe "real Americans" are descendants of white Europeans born on U.S. soil. "America," Miller says, "is for Americans only." In response to Miller's dictates, non-white citizens are being grabbed and roughed up by federal agents demanding that they provide their papers. "What does it mean to be an American if armed, masked men can sweep anybody, citizen or not, off the street, forcing people into unmarked SUVs?"