DOJ files 123 cases to revoke naturalized Americans' citizenship

The Justice Department says it has filed 123 civil lawsuits to strip naturalised Americans of their citizenship since January 20, 2025, which it calls the most in its recorded history. It put the figure at 22 in April and 64 in early July, and at 123 on August 3.

The most recent wave landed in a two-week stretch. Between July 20 and Aug. 3, 2026, prosecutors brought denaturalization actions in federal district courts against 25 people accused of serious crimes, including attempted first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, and aggravated sexual assault of a child. Blanche called that batch the largest coordinated denaturalization effort in the department's history. Matthew Tragesser, the department's deputy director for communications, told Newsweek on April 23 that it was pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history and was 'moving at warp speed.'

Denaturalization is not the same as deportation. In a civil denaturalization case, the government sues in federal court to cancel a naturalization already granted, which turns a citizen back into a noncitizen. That person does not automatically leave the country, but can then be placed in removal proceedings. It cannot be done by a letter from an agency; only a federal judge can order it.

How the department frames the push

Todd Blanche, who was acting attorney general through the summer and was confirmed as attorney general on Aug. 8, 2026, has cast the campaign as a defense of the naturalization process rather than a new power. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalized citizen's status can be revoked, and the certificate of naturalization canceled, if it was illegally procured or obtained by concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation. The administration has framed the tactic not as an exceptional measure but as routine enforcement.

U.S. citizenship is one of our nation's highest privileges, and it must be obtained lawfully and honestly.

The tactic is old. Denaturalization was used heavily during the McCarthy era of the late 1940s and early 1950s, when it was aimed at accused communists. The modern machinery dates to Operation Janus, which grew out of a 2008 discovery of fingerprint records and was set up under the Obama administration, though Obama-era filings averaged slightly fewer per year than the Bush administration's. Case numbers then grew during President Trump's first term. For most of the past three decades the tactic stayed rare, reserved largely for war criminals and people who had concealed serious crimes.

The scale is what changed. Between 1990 and 2017 the government averaged about 11 denaturalisation cases a year. Figures for the recent administrations are disputed: CNN reported 102 cases across Trump's first term and 24 under Biden, while Newsweek, citing the same department, gave 168 and about 64. Internal guidance now asks USCIS to refer 100 to 200 cases a month, up to 2,400 a year, but a referral is not a filing. In 2018 the agency referred 89 against a plan of 1,600.

Those numbers flow from a June 11, 2025, memo by Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, who told the Civil Division that denaturalization was one of its five enforcement priorities. The memo lays out 10 categories, from national security threats and war crimes to various forms of fraud, financial crimes, and any case the division deems sufficiently important to pursue. It gives U.S. attorneys wide discretion over when to bring a case.

What a civil case leaves out

Civil denaturalization carries fewer protections than a criminal trial. There is no statute of limitations, so the government can sue decades after the oath ceremony. There is no right to a jury, and no right to a government-appointed lawyer, because the case is civil rather than criminal. A defendant who cannot afford an attorney faces the government alone, with a single judge deciding whether the person remains American.

The standard of proof is lower than the reasonable-doubt bar of a criminal prosecution, though the Supreme Court has set it well above the ordinary civil test: in Fedorenko v. United States the court required evidence that is clear, unequivocal and convincing, and that does not leave the issue in doubt. Two legal grounds apply under 8 U.S.C. 1451(a). Illegal procurement covers a person who never met a requirement such as good moral character or the required period of lawful residence. Concealment or willful misrepresentation covers someone who hid or lied about a fact that mattered to the decision.

Honest, immaterial mistakes are not typically triggers, according to immigration attorneys, nor is lawful conduct the government dislikes, nor political speech. The Supreme Court's ruling in Schneiderman v. United States in 1943 set a demanding evidentiary bar for revoking citizenship. Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967 held that Congress cannot strip citizenship without the holder's consent, though that case concerned expatriation and expressly left intact the government's power to undo citizenship that was unlawfully procured.

Warnings of political misuse

Critics point to the memo's language on national security, which they describe as broad enough to invite abuse. At the top of the priority list are cases against people said to pose a potential danger to national security, including any nexus to terrorism. That phrase, standing alone, can be enough to trigger a review of someone's citizenship, according to an account in Talking Points Memo.

I think they're going to push the envelope on denaturalization as they have with many other aspects of immigration enforcement.

The political dimension drew wider attention after Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Kampala, Uganda, and naturalized in 2018, won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City on June 24, 2025. Two days later Rep. Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican, formally asked the department to consider denaturalizing Mamdani over a 2017 track he had recorded under the name Mr. Cardamom that praised the Holy Land Foundation, five of whose leaders were convicted in 2008 on charges tied to supporting Hamas.

President Trump added to the concern on July 1, 2025, saying of Mamdani that 'a lot of people are saying he's here illegally.' Legal scholars who study citizenship argue that stripping a fundamental right through civil procedures, without a jury or appointed counsel, risks turning denaturalization into a tool of political punishment.

Chief Justice Earl Warren, dissenting in Perez v. Brownell in 1958, described citizenship as 'man's basic right for it is nothing less than the right to have rights,' a phrase scholars now invoke against the current approach. Roughly 25 million immigrants were naturalized citizens as of 2023, the population within reach of the campaign, and law professors who study the field say the civil process lacks basic constitutional protection.

The department has also drawn scrutiny for how it selects cases. The December 2025 USCIS directive that set the monthly referral quota applies through fiscal 2026, and the June 2025 memo's instruction to be maximal directs attorneys to pursue any case the evidence might support, regardless of priority level.

A first wave of 384 names

Francey Hakes, who directs the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, described 384 identified individuals as the 'first wave of cases' during an internal meeting. Senior department officials said civil litigators in 39 regional offices had been enlisted to handle the load. Outside counts have not matched the department's own: on July 2, when the department put its second-term total at 64, the advocacy group Democracy Forward counted 69 filings, including 33 in June, and at least nine completed denaturalization rulings.

What the government still has to prove

The legal standard has not changed even as filings have surged. Federal law ties denaturalization to conduct that calls into question a person's good moral character at the time of naturalization, a limit on how broadly the government can reach. Immigration advocates worry that prosecutors will increasingly examine conduct that occurred after someone became a citizen.

Outside data complicates the department's account. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University counted 166 civil denaturalisation complaints in federal courts across the eighteen years to June 12, 2026, only eight of them in the whole of 2025, with a sharp jump in May and June of this year. That is well short of the 123 the department says it has filed since January 2025. Several districts withhold the complaints themselves from PACER, so the two counts cannot be reconciled from outside.

Of the 62 cases for which the grounds could be located, TRAC reported that the alleged bases appeared meritorious, even amid the spike. Individual filings bear that out. Tatiana Power, 46, of Weston, Florida, was accused of sexual abuse of children before she naturalized in 2010, and Maria Lourdes Montoya, 63, named in a separate filing announced on June 8, 2026, was accused of misrepresenting her husband's identity to obtain residence.

Whether the pace can hold

Former Justice Department and Homeland Security lawyers have questioned whether the filing rate is sustainable. The department has set a goal of at least 250 cases by October 2026, a spokesperson confirmed, while the immigration litigation office and U.S. attorneys contend with a record number of constitutional challenges from detained immigrants, straining resources. Critics argue the targets outpace both the legal framework and the staffing needed for careful work.

The administration has been explicit that it views the campaign as ordinary law enforcement. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in April 2026 that citizenship fraud is a serious crime and that the effort reflects federal law rather than a White House initiative. A USCIS spokesman, Zach Kahler, said the agency was working with the department to aggressively pursue denaturalization of anyone who obtained citizenship through fraud.

Among the earliest revocations of the second term was that of Elliott Duke, a military veteran originally from the United Kingdom, whose citizenship a judge in the Western District of Louisiana ordered revoked on June 13, 2025, after a conviction for receiving and possessing child sexual abuse material predating naturalization.

Pamela Bondi, then the attorney general, said in March 2026 that the department was moving to strip citizenship from people who conceal crimes or defraud the American people during the immigration process, framing the work as a standing priority rather than a review of old files. She was removed from the post the following month.

How far the courts will let the effort run remains unsettled. Legal scholars who study citizenship contend that resolving a fundamental right through civil litigation, without the safeguards of a criminal trial, risks constitutional challenge as the volume grows. Former officials say the department's staffing may not keep pace with its own targets, and much of the caseload has proceeded out of public view.