{"id":406,"date":"2026-06-10T19:08:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=406"},"modified":"2026-06-10T19:08:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:08:22","slug":"trump-administration-moves-to-denaturalize-17-americans-in-attack-on-legal-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration Moves to Denaturalize 17 Americans in Attack on Legal Immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Read more Lawyers Are Building a New Infrastructure to Fight Trump\u2019s Deportation Machine<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it is seeking to strip the citizenship of 17 Americans born outside the U.S. in the largest denaturalization effort in decades. <\/p>\n

The administration claims that the individuals committed serious crimes and failed to disclose them during the naturalization process. But this is only the latest maneuver in President Donald Trump\u2019s attempt to ramp up denaturalization and target immigration, including legal immigration. <\/p>\n

Of the 17 targeted individuals, 11 are from countries in Latin American and the Caribbean, three are from Asia, two from Africa, and one is European. <\/p>\n

Last month, the administration announced that it would begin the process to denaturalize 12 other citizens. <\/p>\n

Trump has moved to ramp up denaturalizations since his first term, and even more so in his second. <\/p>\n

In December, the Trump administration directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to supply the Department of Justice with 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month. <\/p>\n

In April, the administration identified 384 Americans born outside the U.S. whose citizenship it wants to revoke. The administration also stated that it would use regular prosecutors in regional courts, rather than those within the Department of Justice\u2019s Office of Immigration Litigation, to accelerate the pace of denaturalizations. <\/p>\n

Denaturalization cases have been relatively rare since the 1990s. Between 1990 and 2017, the U.S. government filed an average of 11 denaturalization cases per year. The process is known to require a high bar of evidence. <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s efforts appear to include an attempt to lower this bar. In one case during Trump\u2019s first term, the Justice Department stripped the citizenship of a New Jersey man born in India after declaring that he had arrived in the U.S. without travel documents or proof of identity, and that he had used a different name. <\/p>\n

Read more Trump-Deported Migrants Remain Locked Up in Eswatini, Where They Have No Ties<\/a><\/p>\n

In a more recent case, a U.S. citizen born in Mexico was denaturalized for drug dealing, and the case rested on whether or not he had begun selling drugs \u2013 largely marijuana \u2013 before or after his naturalization. The Department of Justice revoked his citizenship after concluding that he had started selling drugs the year before becoming a citizen, though his attorney insists this is false. <\/p>\n

Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, told The New York Times<\/em> in April that expanded denaturalization sends the message \u201cthat naturalized citizens don\u2019t have the same rights and stability as native-born citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government has used this power in the past to target people it views as political opponents,\u201d she warned. <\/p>\n

Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, told NPR<\/em> this month that the denaturalization efforts \u201care an attempt to suppress the political speech of naturalized citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the cases that have been brought first are maybe people who\u2019ve committed some pretty bad crimes, the government\u2019s rhetoric is certainly not limited to that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce it becomes easy to take somebody\u2019s citizenship away,\u201d she added, \u201cit becomes easy to take anybody\u2019s citizenship away.\u201d <\/p>\n

While the U.S. has denaturalized infrequently since the 1990s, the last widespread government effort to denaturalize U.S. citizens was during the McCarthy period. During the Red Scare of the 1940s and \u201850s, the U.S. government denaturalized thousands of foreign-born Americans accused of communist sympathies. <\/p>\n

But in 1967, a Supreme Court ruling drastically limited denaturalization. Since then, it has largely been limited to whether or not an individual failed to disclose previous crimes or convictions in their naturalization process. But this, too, can be up to interpretation \u2013 as the naturalization application does not define what it considers to be a crime. <\/p>\n

But even in the years before Trump, some cases of denaturalization were highly political. In the case of Rasmea Odeh, the Palestinian community activist was deported in 2017 after a years-long case. Odeh was arrested by the Department of Homeland Security in 2013 \u2013 under Obama\u2019s administration \u2013 and charged with \u2018unlawful procurement of naturalization\u2019 for failing to mention her conviction and imprisonment by Israel, where she had been tortured and sexually assaulted. <\/p>\n

Read more US Helicopter Downed Over Strait of Hormuz, Raising Fears of Further Escalation<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe government has used this power in the past to target people it views as political opponents,\u201d said a law professor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump Administration Moves to Denaturalize 17 Americans in Attack on Legal Immigration - Smart Moving Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=406\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump Administration Moves to Denaturalize 17 Americans in Attack on Legal Immigration - 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