The U.S. Department of Justice has directed its Civil Division to make denaturalization a core focus, according to an internal memo dated 11 June and signed by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate. Under the order, federal attorneys are told to “prioritize and maximally pursue” the revocation of U.S. citizenship from naturalized Americans who fall into ten categories of criminal or national-security concern.
Targets include individuals linked to terrorism, espionage, war crimes, violent or sex offences, human trafficking, gang or cartel activity, and a range of financial frauds such as Paycheck Protection Program and Medicaid schemes. The department will rely chiefly on civil proceedings—a forum that does not guarantee government-funded counsel and applies a lower burden of proof than criminal court—to expedite cases.
Denaturalization has historically been rare: from 1990 to 2017 the Justice Department filed just 305 cases. The new instruction ranks the practice among the Civil Division’s top five enforcement priorities, marking the Trump administration’s most aggressive step yet in tightening immigration policy. Roughly 24.5 million of the nation’s 46.2 million immigrants are naturalized citizens, making the policy potentially wide-reaching.
Critics, including immigration-law scholars and civil-rights groups, warn that the expanded criteria could erode due-process protections, leave people stateless and create what they call a second-tier class of American citizens. Supporters contend that revoking fraudulently obtained citizenship is essential to public safety and national security.
Since the memo was issued, the department has already secured the denaturalization of at least one person: Elliott Duke, a British-born U.S. Army veteran who was stripped of citizenship on 13 June after a federal judge found Duke had concealed a prior child-sex-abuse-material offence during the naturalization process.
The Justice Department is ramping up its plans to revoke the citizenship of immigrants who've committed crimes or pose a national security risk, according to a recent memo underscoring the Trump administration's hardline immigration agenda.
