Unmaking Americans: Trump aims to revoke citizenship

What has Trump said?

After months of targeting undocumented migrants and some legal immigrants for removal from the U.S., the president has recently turned his attention to American citizens. In July, Trump raised the possibility of deporting his South African–born ex-adviser Elon Musk and the Ugandan-born New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani (explaining that "we don't need a communist in this country"), and said he was "giving serious consideration" to stripping comedian and Trump nemesis Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship. The Supreme Court has ruled that U.S.-born citizens like O'Donnell cannot have their citizenship taken away. But the government can revoke the citizenship of naturalized, foreign-born Americans—who make up more than 7% of the population, about 25 million people— through a legal process known as denaturalization, which returns them to the immigration status they held before naturalizing. At that point, deportation proceedings can begin. And in June, the Justice Department said its Civil Division had been directed by Trump to "maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence."

Is there a precedent for this policy?

Denaturalization was remarkably common for much of the 20th century. The 1906 law that federalized the naturalization process included a provision allowing new Americans to lose their citizenship due to fraud, racial ineligibility—a clause initially aimed at Chinese people—and lack of "good moral character." Denaturalization quickly became "a tool for ridding the American citizenry of 'undesirables,'" said historian Patrick Weil. That included the Russian-born anarchist Emma Goldman, whom the government had spent years unsuccessfully trying to deport. Those efforts initially fell flat, because Goldman had legally obtained citizenship through her first marriage. But immigration officials investigated her ex-husband, found he'd put the wrong age on his citizenship application, and denaturalized him and Goldman using the 1906 law. She was deported in 1919, alongside 248 others considered foreign anarchists or communists. The 1940 Nationality Act expanded those eligible to be stripped of citizenship, including U.S.-born citizens who had joined a foreign army, voted in foreign elections, or deserted during wartime.

How many people lost citizenship?

Between 1907 and 1967, the government recorded about 22,000 denaturalizations. Weil estimates another 121,000 U.S.-born citizens lost their nationality from 1945 to 1977. The Supreme Court pared back the government's citizenship-stripping powers with a string of rulings in the 1950s and '60s, the most significant being 1967's Afroyim v. Rusk. In 1960, the State Department declared that Polish-born painter Beys Afroyim had forfeited his U.S. citizenship by voting in a 1951 Israeli election. The Supreme Court overturned that decision and much of the 1940 Nationality Act in 1967, ruling that the 14th Amendment's "citizenship clause" says simply that all American-born or naturalized Americans are U.S. citizens—a status that only the individual can renounce. "The Government is without power to rob a citizen of his citizenship," wrote Justice Hugo Black. Denaturalization numbers dropped after that ruling, with only a few cases filed each year.

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What's the current legal situation?

There are two grounds for denaturalization: committing serious human rights violations before naturalization and committing fraud during the naturalization process. Officials must also demonstrate a person lacks "good moral character." The most common targets in recent decades were naturalized citizens with undisclosed Nazi pasts, such as Feodor Fedorenko, who kept secret that he'd been a guard at the Treblinka extermination camp. He was denaturalized in 1981 and deported to his native USSR, where he was executed in 1987. Denaturalization investigations began to ramp up with the 2010 launch of Operation Janus under President Obama, which used new digital tools to search for discrepancies in fingerprint data that might indicate naturalization fraud. Some 315,000 potential cases were flagged, but because such investigations require significant resources, the first Janus denaturalization occurred in 2018, under President Trump. Around that same time, Trump created a "denaturalization task force" to examine the files of some 700,000 naturalized citizens. In total, 102 denaturalization cases were filed during the first Trump administration; the Biden administration filed 24.

Who's being targeted now?

The DOJ's June memo lists 10 potential grounds for denaturalization, including having links to terrorism, gangs, or cartels; committing fraud against the government or individuals; and "any other cases" deemed "sufficiently important to pursue." Immigration experts and former officials warn that the memo is so broad that it could be used to denaturalize Americans for minor infractions, such as an underpayment of taxes. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) has argued that Mamdani should be denaturalized for writing rap lyrics that, he said, suggest support for Hamas. Immigration lawyers say such an argument is unlikely to succeed in court, because in civil denaturalization cases the government has to show "clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt." Playing a "game of gotcha with naturalization applicants isn't going to work," said Jeremy McKinney, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. But he notes that simply threatening denaturalization can "create a climate of panic and anxiety and fear" in which naturalized critics of the Trump administration may think twice before speaking up. "They're doing that very well," said McKinney. "So, mission accomplished in that regard."

Denaturalized for political beliefs

The idea of using denaturalization to root out supposedly un-American behavior has a long but not always successful history. In 1939, the U.S. government sought to revoke the citizenship of Russia-born William Schneiderman, then secretary of the Communist Party's California branch. Officials alleged Schneiderman's citizenship had been obtained through fraud, since he could not have pledged to support the Constitution—as naturalization law required—while simultaneously belonging to a party that advocated revolution. A federal court agreed and Schneiderman was denaturalized. The case was successfully appealed to the Supreme Court by Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican nominee for president, and in 1943 the justices ruled that Schneiderman had not acted fraudulently; the citizenship application didn't ask if he was a Communist, so he could not have lied. The justices also stressed that the First Amendment protects freedom of thought, including political beliefs, setting a precedent that could become relevant if Trump acts on his threats. "The constitutional fathers, fresh from a revolution, did not forge a political straitjacket for the generations to come," wrote Justice Frank Murphy.