Trump administration wants to strip US citizenship from migrants with civil convictions

The Donald Trump administration wants to promote the revocation of U.S. citizenship from foreigners who have committed crimes, according to a memorandum sent by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to employees working in the civil division. Dated June 11, the letter urges prosecutors to prioritize the denaturalization of migrants who fall into various categories of crimes, leaving broad discretion to state lawyers.

The crimes that can lead to loss of citizenship are judged through civil proceedings, so the accused do not have the right to legal counsel as they would in criminal court. Nearly 25 million immigrants were naturalized citizens by 2023, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.

Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, who signed the memorandum, wrote in the memorandum that denaturalization will be one of the agency’s top five priorities. “The civil division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence,” reads the document.

The memo lists several categories of crimes that could result in citizenship being revoked. These include posing a danger to national security; engaging in torture, war crimes, or other human rights violations; being members of drug cartels; human trafficking; and committing sexual offenses. Financial crimes are also included, such as committing fraud against Medicaid (the public health insurance program) and Medicare (the program for people over 65 and young people with disabilities). The list is long, and what worries critics most is the vagueness of some categories and the wide discretion prosecutors are given to decide who can be subject to denaturalization, which could lead to broad arbitrariness.

“These categories do not limit the civil division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance. Further, the Civil Division retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate,” the memo states.

Denaturalization was widely used during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s era, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when a widespread campaign targeted anyone suspected, however loosely, of having ties to communism.

During Democrat Barack Obama’s presidency, denaturalization expanded. The introduction of digital tools allowed citizenship applications to be reviewed, and fraudulent cases discovered, in which applicants lied about their criminal convictions or affiliations with illegal groups. During Trump’s first term, this was expanded to include civil offenses.

The case of Elliott Duke

A recent case occurred on June 13, when a judge ordered Elliott Duke’s citizenship to be revoked. Duke was a U.S. military veteran originally from the United Kingdom who was convicted of distributing child sexual abuse material.

In 2012, while serving in Germany, he began receiving and distributing child sexual abuse material via email and the internet, according to the Justice Department. Duke admitted to distributing the material before applying for U.S. citizenship.

“If you commit serious crimes before you become a U.S. citizen and then lie about them during your naturalization process, the Justice Department will discover the truth and come after you,” Shumate said in June. Duke had renounced his British nationality to obtain U.S. citizenship, rendering him stateless.

The debate about denaturalization and its promotion has also targeted New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. The unexpected winner of the Democratic primaries was born in Uganda and grew up in New York. On June 26, Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting that Mamdani be stripped of U.S. citizenship for supporting terrorist groups. According to Ogles, Mamdani sympathized with a group supporting the Palestinian organization Hamas. During the primary campaign, Mamdani advocated fighting antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Immigration law experts have expressed serious concerns about the constitutionality of the Department of Justice’s initiative and about how it will affect the families of naturalized citizens, especially children who obtained citizenship through their parents.

Denaturalization is just the latest step in the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant campaign and its desire to redefine who is American. Last week, the magnate received backing from the Supreme Court in his effort to eliminate birthright citizenship guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which applies to children born to undocumented parents. Although the high court did not rule directly on the matter, it sided with the Republican so that lower court rulings cannot block his decisions on a national level, opening the door for birthright citizenship to be removed in some states.

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