The Trump Administration is moving to strip 17 naturalized Americans of their citizenship, building on its denaturalization efforts about a month after announcing plans to do the same for a dozen other naturalized citizens.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the latest action on Monday, accusing the 17 Americans of “serious offenses — including sexual abuse of a minor, wire and bank fraud, and distributing drugs wholesale without a license.” The group includes people from countries including Cuba, Haiti, Colombia, Mexico, and Jamaica, among others.
The DOJ said in its press release that “under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalized U.S. citizen’s citizenship may be revoked, and certificate of naturalization canceled, if the naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.”
“When criminal aliens exploit the naturalization process by breaking the law, there are consequences,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “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.”
A DOJ memo released last year revealed that the agency planned to prioritize initiating denaturalization proceedings against certain individuals, including those “who pose a potential danger to national security” and those “who committed felonies that were not disclosed during the naturalization process.”
In January, President Donald Trump said that his Administration was looking into stripping certain naturalized Americans of their citizenship, sparking concern among immigration advocates and legal experts. Last month, the DOJ announced that it had filed denaturalization actions against 12 people that it accused of “serious offenses — including providing material support to a terrorist group, committing war crimes, and sexually abusing a minor.”
Historically, cases of denaturalization have been rare. Experts have said that “the law imposes a high bar” for stripping a naturalized American’s citizenship. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “a person is subject to revocation of naturalization if there is deliberate deceit on the part of the person in misrepresenting or failing to disclose a material fact or facts on his or her naturalization application and subsequent examination.”
The DOJ on Monday alleged that the 17 Americans it was filing denaturalization actions against gave false or misleading information to officials during the naturalization process. The DOJ also asserted that the individuals lacked the “good moral character” required to become a naturalized citizen.
Denaturalization cases ramped up during Trump’s first Administration as well, with an average of 42 such cases filed annually—higher than the previous average of 11 annually between 1990 and 2017, according to the National Immigration Forum.
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The Administration’s current push to prioritize denaturalization comes amid Trump’s wider efforts to crack down on both legal and illegal immigration. Trump, who campaigned on a mass deportation platform in the 2024 election, has authorized aggressive immigration enforcement operations during his second term, including in Minneapolis, where two people were shot and killed by federal agents at the start of the year.
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