Trump’s DOJ is prioritizing denaturalization — the Constitution has something to say about that

Last week, Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that called for a federal investigation to determine whether New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda — should be subject to denaturalization proceedings based on eight-year-old rap lyrics that Ogles claims could constitute material support for terrorism. At a news conference Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that the allegations, “if true, were something that should be investigated.”

And earlier in June, the Justice Department issued a memo announcing its directive to “maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings.”

The Trump administration made denaturalization a priority during the first term, creating a special Justice Department section to pursue these cases. The administration now appears positioned to expand these efforts with a policy requiring that denaturalization be pursued wherever legally possible.

As the apparent next step in the Trump administration’s mass deportation regime, this rarely used but potentially far-reaching government power is getting newfound attention. As legal scholars who study denaturalization, we believe the new Justice Department policy could significantly expand the circumstances under which naturalized Americans might lose their citizenship in ways that raise serious constitutional questions.

Denaturalization is the government’s power to revoke people’s U.S. citizenship after they’ve been naturalized. Unlike deportation, which removes noncitizens from the country, denaturalization strips away the citizenship itself, returning people to their previous immigration statuses and potentially making them deportable.

For most of American history, denaturalization was relatively rare. It spiked during the Red Scare era when the government targeted alleged communists and Nazi sympathizers but largely disappeared after the 1960s after the Supreme Court imposed constitutional limits on the practice in Afroyim v. Rusk. In that case, the court held denaturalization was unconstitutional in most circumstances, leaving open only cases in which someone “illegally procured” citizenship by not meeting requirements or obtaining it through fraud or concealment of material facts. In the half-century after this decision, fewer than 150 Americans were denaturalized, mostly former war criminals who had hidden their pasts.

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The legal framework for denaturalization differs significantly from criminal proceedings in ways that, we argue, create fundamental fairness problems. While criminal defendants receive court-appointed attorneys, jury trials and “beyond a reasonable doubt” proof standards, denaturalization typically occurs in civil court with far fewer protections.

Civil denaturalization cases provide no right to an attorney, meaning defendants without resources often face the government without representation. There are no jury trials, with judges making citizenship determinations alone. The burden of proof is “clear and convincing evidence” rather than the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Additionally, there is no statute of limitations, allowing the government to build cases on decades-old evidence that may be incomplete or unreliable.

We believe this procedural framework violates constitutional principles. The Supreme Court has recognized citizenship as a fundamental right, with Chief Justice Earl Warren describing it as the “right to have rights.” Taking away such a fundamental right through procedures that would be inadequate for minor civil disputes appears to violate basic due process protections.

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More fundamentally, we argue that aggressive denaturalization policies conflict with constitutional principles of citizenship. The framers envisioned citizens as sovereign, serving as the source of government power rather than its subjects. Allowing the government to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans for decades-old conduct creates exactly the kind of arbitrary governmental authority the Constitution was designed to prevent.

The administration’s “maximal enforcement” approach means pursuing cases beyond clear instances of fraud, potentially including any situation in which evidence might support denaturalization regardless of strength or age. This approach will inevitably result in cases involving ambiguous evidence that can be arbitrarily interpreted by the government.

While supporters of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts argue that denaturalization maintains the integrity of the naturalization system, we contend that the policy risks creating different classes of citizenship, with naturalized Americans facing ongoing vulnerability that native-born citizens never experience. This effectively creates the kind of second-class citizenship that our constitutional system forbids.

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Approximately 20 million naturalized Americans must now live with the knowledge that any mistake in their decades-old immigration paperwork could theoretically cost them their citizenship. This uncertainty undermines the security that citizenship is supposed to provide and may discourage full civic participation among naturalized Americans.

When naturalized citizens fear that their citizenship statuses could be scrutinized based on their political activities or criticism of government policies, it can suppress the very democratic participation that citizenship is meant to protect. The policy represents a fundamental threat to the principle that American citizenship should be permanent and secure.