New Delhi: The US Department of Justice announced Monday that it filed denaturalisation cases against 17 US citizens who have been accused of “serious offenses—including sexual abuse of a minor, wire and bank fraud, and distributing drugs wholesale without a license”.
US officials have said this is the largest effort of the US government to exercise its denaturalisation powers. This unprecedented push is a part of President Trump’s broader crackdown on immigration since the start of his second term in January 2025.
The Trump administration’s denaturalisation campaign primarily targets naturalised American citizens who were born outside the US, but face accusation of fraudulently obtaining US citizenship. Those who qualify for naturalisation in the US include people who have held a Green Card for over five years, those who have married a US citizen, and individuals who were born abroad to US citizens.
The Justice Department’s Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Monday, “When criminal aliens exploit the naturalization process by breaking the law, there are consequences. Criminal aliens are lying about their past crimes, including drug dealers, sexual predators, and fraudsters.”
He added, “Gaining U.S. citizenship is a privilege and under the steadfast leadership of President Trump, this Department of Justice maintains a zero-tolerance policy for the abuse of this process.”
Denaturalisation entails the revocation of US citizenship and all accompanied legal benefits, including protection from deportation. Those who are denaturalised revert back to their prior immigration status, usually as permanent US residents. The denaturalisation process allows those targeted to challenge the government’s actions and attempt to retain their citizenship.
Denaturalisation has been a rare and complex occurrence in American history, as it can only occur in federal courts under civil or criminal proceedings. Under federal law, the US government can strip citizenship of naturalised Americans for committing fraud to become a citizen, including through hiding key information lik marital status, age, and past criminal conduct. Historically, the US government reviewed denaturalisation cases against pro-Nazi German Americans during World War II.
The National Immigration Forum reported an annual average of 11 denaturalisation cases between 1990 and 2017.
According to a US official, the Justice Department filed 24 denaturalisation cases during the entirety of the Biden administration—a figure which the Trump administration has beaten within the last year alone. In May, the Justice Department pushed to denaturalise a dozen individuals under suspected terrorism, espionage, and war crime charges.
In the denaturalisation actions 8 June, the Justice Departmen listed a man of Haitian origin who was accused of sexually abusing his daughter, a man from the former Yugoslavia convicted of sexually abusing a child under the age of 15, a woman of Colombian origin who is the daughter of a major drug trafficker and has allegedly committed bank and wire fraud, and a man of Indian origin who was accused of having signed and filed 11 fraudulent H1-B visa petitions.
Other individuals whom the recent denaturalisation cases have targeted include those with origins in China, the Philippines, Somalia, Congo, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican Republic.
A Justice Department memo released in 2025 stated the agency’s prioritisation of denaturalising citizens who “pose a potential danger to national security”. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated the intention of the Trump administration to “continue to use every lawful avenue to denaturalize and remove aliens”.
(Edited by Archishman Ganguly)
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