Becoming a US citizen no longer enough to escape Trump’s immigration crackdown | Opinion

The de-naturalization of foreign-born U.S. citizens isn’t new and has been done under both Democratic and Republican presidents. But the Trump administration’s latest guidance telling federal prosecutors to “prioritize” such cases raises a significant question: How will be this new priority be focused? Will it be stretched to go beyond obvious cases of immigration fraud to become a political weapon deployed in service of the president’s goal to deport an ever-expanding group of foreigners?

Think of how the administration has gone after students with visas or green cards who have protested in support of Palestinians, or how Republicans are calling for the de-naturalization of Democrats born abroad. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, for example, has called for the deportation of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia and became a U.S. citizen, after she criticized President Donald Trump’s military parade.

The stories most people have probably heard about foreign-born Americans being stripped of citizenship are the classic cases of someone lying in their application — Germans who didn’t disclose their ties to the Nazis after the war, for example, or people who engaged in fake marriages to obtain immigration status.

There’s no doubt that people who lie on their immigration documents need to be scrutinized, but, as the Herald reported this week, immigration and defense attorneys worry new Department of Justice guidelines are broad and vague, allowing for a potential expansion of what offenses could result in a person being stripped of citizenship.

Luckily, a federal judge must decide whether there are grounds to take such a drastic action, but that’s a long and expensive process that can cause turmoil in people’s lives and destroy their reputations. Also, these proceedings take place in civil court, where judges apply a lower standard of evidence than in criminal cases.

According to a recent Department of Justice memo, the administration wants to go beyond seeking de-naturalization in cases of people who may have lied or done something illegal while seeking citizenship. The DOJ wants to broaden that scope to include crimes people committed after becoming citizens, which the Herald reported is an “untested legal frontier.” In fact, the administration might bump up against a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court opinion that found that the 14th Amendment is designed to “protect every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship.”

Citing Trump’s policy objectives in the June 11 memo, the head of DOJ’s Civil Division instructed government lawyers to go after naturalized citizens who pose a potential danger to national security, such as acts of terrorism or espionage, violated human rights, engaged in international drug trafficking or committed felonies that were not disclosed during the naturalization application. The list even includes naturalized citizens who have been convicted of defrauding the U.S. government, such as Medicare, Medicaid and COVID-19 loan programs.

More concerning, the memo also gives prosecutors discretion to pursue “any other cases deemed sufficiently important to merit the resources,” which could easily lead to political weaponization of the process.

Would DOJ officials feel empowered to go through the immigration history of political opponents and people whose views differ from the president’s? U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tennessee, has already sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking for an investigation into whether Uganda-born New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, concealed information during his naturalization process. Trump himself has floated stripping citizenship from former-ally-turned-foe Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa.

Beyond high profile cases, are we going to see regular people be forced to defend their naturalization over minor issues with their citizenship applications?

With about 24.5 million naturalized citizens in the U.S., it’s likely that the DOJ will focus on bigger cases involving people who committed serious offenses first. Yet stripping someone of their citizenship should be a tall task.

Citizens who are found guilty of a crime should pay their debt to society, but de-naturalizing them should be used only in the most extreme cases. De-naturalization should be a grave matter, not a political goal.

Click here to send the letter.

This story was originally published July 9, 2025 at 6:00 AM.