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Daily Maverick
a day ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
US Justice Department's hardened efforts to denaturalise citizens is likely to violate constitutional rights
An aggressive new directive has millions of Americans who became legal citizens through the naturalisation process living in fear of having their citizenship revoked. The Trump administration wants to take away citizenship from naturalised Americans on a massive scale. Although a recent US Justice Department memo prioritises national security cases, it directs employees to 'maximally pursue denaturalisation proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence' across 10 broad priority categories. Denaturalisation is different from deportation, which removes non-citizens from the country. With civil denaturalisation, the government files a lawsuit to strip people's US citizenship after they have become citizens, turning them back into non-citizens who can then be deported. The government can only do this in specific situations. It must prove someone ' illegally procured ' citizenship by not meeting the requirements, or that they lied or hid important facts during the citizenship process. The Trump administration's 'maximal enforcement' approach means pursuing any case where evidence might support taking away citizenship, regardless of priority level or strength of evidence. As our earlier research documented, this has already led to cases like that of Baljinder Singh, whose citizenship was revoked based on a name discrepancy that could easily have resulted from a translator's error rather than intentional fraud. A brief history For most of American history, taking away citizenship has been rare. But it increased dramatically in the 1940s and 1950s during the Red Scare period characterised by intense suspicion of communism. The US government targeted people it thought were communists or Nazi supporters. Between 1907 and 1967, more than 22,000 Americans lost their citizenship this way. Everything changed in 1967 when the Supreme Court decided Afroyim v Rusk. The court said the government usually cannot take away citizenship without the person's consent. It left open only cases involving fraud during the citizenship process. After this decision, denaturalisation became extremely rare. From 1968 to 2013, fewer than 150 people lost their citizenship. They were mostly war criminals who had hidden their past. How the process works In criminal lawsuits, defendants get free lawyers if they can't afford one. They get jury trials. The government must prove guilt 'beyond a reasonable doubt' – the highest standard of proof. But in most denaturalisation cases, the government files a civil suit, in which none of these protections exists. People facing denaturalisation get no free lawyer, meaning poor defendants often face the government alone. There's no jury trial – just a judge deciding whether someone deserves to remain American. The burden of proof is lower – 'clear and convincing evidence' instead of 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. Most important, there's no time limit, so the government can go back decades to build cases. As law professors who study citizenship, we believe this system violates basic constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has called citizenship a fundamental right. Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1958 described it as the ' right to have rights.' In our reading of the law, taking away such a fundamental right through civil procedures that lack basic constitutional protection – no right to counsel for those who can't afford it, no jury trial and a lower burden of proof – seems to violate the due process of law required by the constitution. The bigger problem is what citizenship-stripping policy does to democracy. When the government can strip citizenship from naturalised Americans for decades-old conduct through civil procedures with minimal due process protection – pursuing cases based on evidence that might not meet criminal standards – it undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide. This creates a system where naturalised citizens face vulnerability that can last their entire lives, potentially chilling their full participation in American democracy. The Justice Department memo establishes 10 priority categories for denaturalisation cases. They range from national security threats and war crimes to various forms of fraud, financial crimes and, most importantly, any other cases it deems 'sufficiently important to pursue'. This 'maximal enforcement' approach means pursuing not just clear cases of fraud, but also any case where evidence might support taking away citizenship, no matter how weak or old the evidence is. This creates fear throughout immigrant communities. About 20 million naturalised Americans now must worry that any mistake in their decades-old immigration paperwork could cost them their citizenship. A two-tier system This policy effectively creates two different types of American citizens. Native-born Americans never have to worry about losing their citizenship, no matter what they do. But naturalised Americans face vulnerability that can last their entire lives. This has already happened. A woman who became a naturalised citizen in 2007 helped her boss with paperwork that was later used in fraud. She cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was characterised by prosecutors as only a 'minimal participant', completed her sentence and still faced losing her citizenship decades later because she didn't report the crime on her citizenship application – even though she hadn't been charged at the time. The Justice Department's directive to 'maximally pursue' cases across 10 broad categories – combined with the first Trump administration's efforts to review more than 700,000 naturalisation files – represents an unprecedented expansion of denaturalisation efforts. The policy will almost certainly face legal challenges on constitutional grounds, but the damage may already be done. When naturalised citizens fear that their status could be revoked, it undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide. The Supreme Court, in Afroyim v Rusk, was focused on protecting existing citizens from losing their citizenship. The constitutional principle behind that decision – that citizenship is a fundamental right that can't be arbitrarily taken away by whoever happens to be in power – applies equally to how the government handles denaturalisation cases today. The Trump administration's directive, combined with court procedures that lack basic constitutional protections, risks creating a system that the Afroyim v Rusk decision sought to prevent – one where, as the Supreme Court said: 'A group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship.' DM First published by The Conversation. Cassandra Burke Robertson is professor of law and director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Irina D Manta is professor of law and director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York. This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Could Trump ‘run' New York City?
President Donald Trump issued a provocative threat during a Cabinet meeting this week: If New York City elects a 'communist' mayor, he might take the city over, just like he might take over Washington, DC. 'We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to,' he said. He was referring to the rise of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee in New York's upcoming mayoral race. Mamdani is not a communist, but rather a democratic socialist in the vein of Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The president clearly sees the would-be mayor as an A-list political enemy he'll use to argue the Democratic Party has been overtaken by the 'radical left.' His increasing use of the word 'communist' harks back to the ugliness of the Red Scare. Trump also trotted out some profanity in the Cabinet Room of the White House when he referred to Mamdani as 'a man who's not very capable, in my opinion, other than he's got a good line of bullsh*t.' It's the latest in a string of increasingly charged accusations Trump has made, including that Mamdani, who is a naturalized citizen, might be in the US illegally, something for which there is no evidence. That kind of attack will sound familiar to anyone who remembers Trump's incessant and false questioning of President Barack Obama's birth certificate. But the idea that Trump might try to 'run' New York if Mamdani wins is something else — a warning to New York voters and a new threat to expand presidential power. Does that mean starving the city of federal funds or something more drastic? It would also be pretty clearly unconstitutional for him to try to 'run' the city, according to Elizabeth Goitein, an expert on presidential power at the Brennan Center for Justice. When I asked her what presidential authority would allow him to do so, her answer was short. 'Not run a city,' she said, pointing to the 10th Amendment, which gives powers not enumerated in the Constitution back to the states. 'There's no emergency power that allows the president to take over a city,' she said, and particularly not in retaliation for electing a mayor the president disagrees with. He has tested the Constitution repeatedly during his second term — trying to reinterpret the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship and reimagine the federal bureaucracy without passing any laws. But Goitein pointed to key decisions, including a rejection of Trump's attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act to more swiftly deport people without due process, to argue the courts remain a meaningful check on the administration. Trump's advisers, CNN has reported, considered using the Insurrection Act, another antiquated law from the early days of the republic, to broadly use federal troops for law enforcement in Los Angeles to help federal deportation agents. Instead, they ended up citing more recent law that allows the federal government to take control of a state's National Guard, for which California is now suing the administration. Goitein said the deployment of troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, by the Eisenhower administration was in the service of a Supreme Court Order. 'That's very different from a city electing a mayor with whose policies the president opposes,' she said. Martial law was declared in Hawaii during World War II, she said, but it was authorized by a law that no longer exists. Trump also referred at the White House to the possibility that he could also take over Washington, DC, something that he has been talking about for years. There's clear precedent for the federal government being in charge of the nation's capital. It's in the Constitution, after all, something that has always complicated efforts by progressives and Democrats to grant statehood to DC. But Congress ceded self-governance to district residents back in 1973, with a law signed by President Richard Nixon, who described himself as 'a longtime supporter of self-government for the District of Columbia.' The CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali, a former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, told me Nixon did take the idea of self-governance seriously, including for DC residents. Trump has described DC today as 'a nightmare of murder and crime,' but back then it was literally reeling and still rebuilding after riots destroyed city blocks following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Naftali pointed out that Nixon was close with the city's mayor, Walter Washington, who advocated for the construction of the Metro subway system and installed the city's first public defender. 'Nixon's view of the District of Columbia was that the residents of the district could best govern themselves,' Naftali told me. 'I do not believe that is Donald Trump's view at all.' The law Nixon signed allowed Washingtonians to vote for their first-ever popularly elected mayor in 1974. Conservatives in Congress today want to take that power back and have introduced a bill, the 'BOWSER Act' (so named to troll DC Mayor Muriel Bowser), to repeal DC's home rule and put the city more under federal control. Trump aligns with Bowser on one key DC issue: the reconstruction of RFK stadium as a home for the Washington Commanders, although the proposal is currently stalled before DC's city council. He promised to 'renovate it, and rebuild our capital city,' but so far that has included the issuance of an executive order and creation of a committee focused on surging police into the streets and creating a beautification plan. Trump said his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, has been working with DC's mayor. And Bowser has been notably uncritical of the Trump administration in his second term. Domingo Morel is an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University who has written about the ugly history of states taking over things like school boards or imposing their will on cities, frequently those with large Black and minority populations, and taking power from the local populations. Trump is implying something similar here, Morel told me. 'He's saying to New Yorkers, 5 million or so registered voters, 'Whatever you say doesn't matter; we're going to take away your ability to govern because we don't like the way you have decided to vote.'' That's assuming Mamdani wins, which is a big assumption, given the fact that current Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo will both be on the ballot on Election Day. Meanwhile, former New Yorker Trump will be chiming in with vague threats.
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Justice Department efforts to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans likely violate constitutional rights
The Trump administration wants to take away citizenship from naturalized Americans on a massive scale. While a recent Justice Department memo prioritizes national security cases, it directs the department to 'maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence' across 10 broad priority categories. Denaturalization is different from deportation, which removes noncitizens from the country. With civil denaturalization, the government files a lawsuit to strip people's U.S. citizenship after they have become citizens, turning them back into noncitizens who can then be deported. The government can only do this in specific situations. It must prove someone 'illegally procured' citizenship by not meeting the requirements, or that they lied or hid important facts during the citizenship process. The Trump administration's 'maximal enforcement' approach means pursuing any case where evidence might support taking away citizenship, regardless of priority level or strength of evidence. As our earlier research documented, this has already led to cases like that of Baljinder Singh, whose citizenship was revoked based on a name discrepancy that could easily have resulted from a translator's error rather than intentional fraud. For most of American history, taking away citizenship has been rare. But it increased dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s during the Red Scare period characterized by intense suspicion of communism. The United States government targeted people it thought were communists or Nazi supporters. Between 1907 and 1967, over 22,000 Americans lost their citizenship this way. Everything changed in 1967 when the Supreme Court decided Afroyim v. Rusk. The court said the government usually cannot take away citizenship without the person's consent. It left open only cases involving fraud during the citizenship process. After this decision, denaturalization became extremely rare. From 1968 to 2013, fewer than 150 people lost their citizenship, mostly war criminals who had hidden their past. In criminal lawsuits, defendants get free lawyers if they can't afford one. They get jury trials. The government must prove guilt 'beyond a reasonable doubt' – the highest standard of proof. But in most denaturalization cases, the government files a civil suit, where none of these protections exist. People facing denaturalization get no free lawyer, meaning poor defendants often face the government alone. There's no jury trial – just a judge deciding whether someone deserves to remain American. The burden of proof is lower – 'clear and convincing evidence' instead of 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' Most important, there's no time limit, so the government can go back decades to build cases. As law professors who study citizenship, we believe this system violates basic constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has called citizenship a fundamental right. Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1958 described it as the 'right to have rights.' In our reading of the law, taking away such a fundamental right through civil procedures that lack basic constitutional protection – no right to counsel for those who can't afford it, no jury trial, and a lower burden of proof – seems to violate the due process of law required by the Constitution when the government seeks to deprive someone of their rights. The bigger problem is what citizenship-stripping policy does to democracy. When the government can strip citizenship from naturalized Americans for decades-old conduct through civil procedures with minimal due process protection – pursuing cases based on evidence that might not meet criminal standards – it undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide. This creates a system where naturalized citizens face ongoing vulnerability that can last their entire lives, potentially chilling their full participation in American democracy. The Justice Department memo establishes 10 priority categories for denaturalization cases. They range from national security threats and war crimes to various forms of fraud, financial crimes and, most importantly, any other cases it deems 'sufficiently important to pursue.' This 'maximal enforcement' approach means pursuing not just clear cases of fraud, but also any case where evidence might support taking away citizenship, no matter how weak or old the evidence is. This creates fear throughout immigrant communities. About 20 million naturalized Americans now must worry that any mistake in their decades-old immigration paperwork could cost them their citizenship. This policy effectively creates two different types of American citizens. Native-born Americans never have to worry about losing their citizenship, no matter what they do. But naturalized Americans face ongoing vulnerability that can last their entire lives. This has already happened. A woman who became a naturalized citizen in 2007 helped her boss with paperwork that was later used in fraud. She cooperated with the FBI investigation, was characterized by prosecutors as only a 'minimal participant,' completed her sentence, and still faced losing her citizenship decades later because she didn't report the crime on her citizenship application – even though she hadn't been charged at the time. The Justice Department's directive to 'maximally pursue' cases across 10 broad categories – combined with the first Trump administration's efforts to review over 700,000 naturalization files – represents an unprecedented expansion of denaturalization efforts. The policy will almost certainly face legal challenges on constitutional grounds, but the damage may already be done. When naturalized citizens fear their status could be revoked, it undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide. The Supreme Court, in Afroyim v. Rusk, was focused on protecting existing citizens from losing their citizenship. The constitutional principle behind that decision – that citizenship is a fundamental right which can't be arbitrarily taken away by whoever happens to be in power – applies equally to how the government handles denaturalization cases today. The Trump administration's directive, combined with court procedures that lack basic constitutional protections, risks creating a system that the Afroyim v. Rusk decision sought to prevent – one where, as the Supreme Court said, 'A group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship.' This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Cassandra Burke Robertson, Case Western Reserve University and Irina D. Manta, Hofstra University Read more: US citizenship was forced on Native Americans 100 years ago − its promise remains elusive Proof that immigrants fuel the US economy is found in the billions they send back home Who are immigrants to the US, where do they come from and where do they live? The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Hill
09-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
A forgotten Supreme Court case protects unpopular speech
An important feature of our legal system is that Supreme Court decisions do not expire. The principles they establish require deference and compliance, even when they seem out of date. Until modified or overturned, Supreme Court rulings must be obeyed and should not be undermined by neglect. Nevertheless, that is what is happening to Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), a landmark First Amendment case. Although it involves fundamental rights that are directly related to contemporary issues, the case has been overlooked by commentators, legislators, lawyers and even judges. If Brandenburg's value was understood, those facing prosecution or deportation for their public statements — such as Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student targeted by the Trump administration — could have relied on the First Amendment to protect them. Clarence Brandenburg was a member of a Ku Klux Klan chapter in Ohio. Someone from the group contacted a television station to invite a film crew to their rally on a farm. The reporter and crew found a dozen people in KKK robes, but no one else. The speakers offered the usual racist and antisemitic statements common at such events, but what interested the Supreme Court was Brandenburg's statement, which aired on the news: 'We're not a revengent organization, but if our president, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it's possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken.' There was no evidence that Brandenburg's words had any effect. He did not urge anyone to obtain weapons and kill innocent people or drive a vehicle into a crowd. Compared to the inflammatory statements in other speech cases, Brandenburg's comments were unthreatening and uninspiring. Brandenburg was prosecuted under the Ohio Syndicalism Act of 1919, enacted during the Red Scare following World War I. Similar laws were adopted by 20 other states. He was convicted, fined $1,000 and sentenced to one to 10 years in prison. Ohio judges thought so little of the case that the appellate court affirmed his conviction without opinion, and the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed the appeal because 'no substantial constitutional question exists.' In unanimously overturning Brandenburg's conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court held that 'the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.' When the court used the phrases 'directed to inciting' and 'is likely to incite or produce such action,' it raised a critical question: How does one know that the speech is likely to 'incite or produce such [lawless] action' unless it actually does? If a speech directly incites an unlawful act, the conviction would be upheld. But if it has no impact, it obviously was not likely to cause such action. Brandenburg suggests that three elements are required for prosecution of potentially dangerous speech: the person specifically encouraged unlawful action; someone who heard or read the speech took such action; and the act could be directly traced to the speech. Thus, if not for the spoken or written words, there would have been no unlawful act. This standard should have protected Khalil, the Columbia graduate from Syria, who is a green card holder and thus a legal U.S. resident. During campus protests over the treatment of Palestinians by Israel in Gaza, Khalil was a negotiator between the students and the university and a spokesperson for some demonstrators. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Khalil on March 8, accusing him of leading 'activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.' He was sent to the ICE detention facility in Louisiana. The White House claimed that Khalil helped organize protests where pro-Hamas propaganda was distributed and accused him of 'siding with pro-terrorist organizations.' He has not been charged with any crime. His lawyer said there is no evidence that Khalil provided support to a terrorist organization. Judge Michael Farbiarz of the federal district court in New Jersey issued a 106-page opinion on May 28 blocking the Trump administration from deporting Khalil. The judge focused on whether Section 1227 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 requires the Secretary of State to identify how Khalil's presence would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences. Instead, Secretary of State Marco Rubio simply reached that conclusion without evidence. Judge Farbiarz ruled that Khalil was entitled to constitutional protection even though he is not a citizen and decided that Section 1227 was 'unconstitutionally vague.' The judge also recognized that the case involved First Amendment rights. His detailed opinion mentions the First Amendment 35 times and either cites or briefly discusses more than 30 First Amendment cases. But he does not include Brandenburg. Khalil's statements fell far short of Brandenburg's requirement that a speaker had to incite an unlawful act that was directly connected to the speech for someone to lose First Amendment protection. It did not matter whether Khalil's involvement inspired demonstrations or the distribution of anti-Israel propaganda. On June 11, the judge ruled that the government could no longer hold Khalil, but he did not order his release. His 14-page opinion cited free speech rights 16 times but, once again, did not mention Brandenburg. The government then changed its reason for holding Khalil and said he was being investigated for misrepresenting his work history when seeking legal residency. Judge Farbiarz determined that was an excuse to punish Khalil for his speech, because lawful residents who have not committed crimes are almost never detained while the government reexamines a green card application. The judge said that holding Khalil under such circumstances was 'highly, highly, highly unusual' and was intended to punish speech. 'And, of course, that would be unconstitutional,' the judge added, and he ordered Khalil's release. On June 20, after more than three months in custody, Khalil was freed. The government immediately appealed. The lessons of Brandenburg — and other cases that elevated the First Amendment to a 'preferred position' in our constitutional system — are that we must tolerate disturbing and even hateful speech so that we can freely discuss public issues. The enduring principles that the Supreme Court recognized in Brandenburg should be dusted off and treated with the reverence they deserve. Richard Labunski, Ph.D., J.D., is a retired journalism professor and author of 'James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights.'
Vox
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The repressive tool behind Trump's latest immigration crackdown
covers politics Vox. She first joined Vox in 2019, and her work has also appeared in Politico, Washington Monthly, and the New Republic. People react after getting their certificate of naturalization during a naturalization ceremony at the JFK Library in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 22. Boston Globe via Getty Images President Donald Trump is reviving a familiar playbook to target naturalized US citizens. The Justice Department recently announced a new push to strip certain people of their citizenship through denaturalization proceedings. Individuals who pose a danger to national security, have committed violent crimes, or fail to disclose a felony history (or make other misrepresentations) on their citizenship application are among those now being prioritized for denaturalization and deportation. In doing so, the administration is likely seeking to expand an authority that the Supreme Court drastically limited decades ago. The president and White House officials have suggested that some prominent denaturalization targets could include one-time Trump megadonor Elon Musk, with whom the president had a public falling out, and Zohran Mamdani, a progressive who recently won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City. It's not clear, however, what legitimate grounds the administration might have to denaturalize either of them. The news may rattle any of the estimated 24.5 million naturalized citizens currently living in the US. That might especially be the case for those who have voiced opposition to Trump, given that his administration has already weaponized immigration policy against dissidents. Related The real reason Trump is suddenly ordering immigration raids Ostensibly, denaturalization is about protecting the integrity of the citizenship process. In practice, the new push 'is about targeting speech the government doesn't like, and it is chilling all naturalized citizens,' said Amanda Frost, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and author of You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping From Dred Scott to the Dreamers. This wouldn't be the first time denaturalization has been used as a tool of political repression. During the Red Scare following World War II, the US pursued denaturalization cases with an eye toward rooting out un-American behavior, both real and perceived. Scholars now see echoes of that era in Trump's strategy. 'There's increasing rhetoric of trying to take people's citizenship away for political reasons,' said Cassandra Burke Robinson, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law who has studied denaturalization. 'I think any time you treat that as even a possibility to be considered, you're going down a really dangerous slope.' What denaturalization looked like during the Red Scare In the 1950s and 1960s, fears about the spread of communism took hold of the US. A political movement known as McCarthyism — named after then-Senator Joseph McCarthy — sought to purge anyone in government with connections to the Communist Party. Denaturalization was one of the tools McCarthyites relied on, and, at the height of the movement, the US was denaturalizing more than 20,000 people per year, Burke Robinson said. In these cases, the government argued that if an individual became a member of the Communist Party at any time, that person had been lying when taking an oath of allegiance to the US as part of their citizenship test and, therefore, could be denaturalized. Later, that argument evolved to target Americans with disfavored political views or who were perceived as disloyal to the US more broadly, not just Communist Party members. One of the primary targets of denaturalization were members of the German American Bund, the American Nazi organization. However, targets also included political gadflies, such as labor leaders, journalists, and anarchists. 'Those whose speech the government didn't like could get removed, and everyone else could stay. They used their discretion in this area to accomplish that goal,' Frost said. Among those targeted for denaturalization was the Australian-born labor leader Harry Bridges, who led longshoremen strikes in California. He accepted support from the Communist Party as part of his union activities, but the government never found evidence that he was a member himself. The notorious House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Bridges, and the government sought his deportation and, once he became a citizen, denaturalization, but never succeeded. Denaturalizations decreased significantly, from tens of thousands to fewer than 10 annually, after the Supreme Court's 1967 decision in Afroyim v. Rusk. In that case, the justices found that the US government does not have the power to denaturalize people without their consent because citizenship is guaranteed by the Constitution's 14th Amendment. 'They said you could only lose your citizenship if you very explicitly renounce,' Frost said. 'The United States government governs with the consent of the citizens. It's not allowed to choose its citizens.' For decades, the ruling meant that denaturalization was a rare phenomenon. However, the court included an exception for cases in which citizenship is 'unlawfully procured' — meaning they were not eligible for citizenship in the first place due to acts like committing war crimes. That's what Trump is now relying on to revive the tactic. What Trump's denaturalization plans could look like Denaturalizations have been increasing since the Obama administration, when the digitization of naturalization records made it easier to identify individuals whose citizenship applications showed discrepancies with other government records. Most denaturalization cases during this period involved people who had committed acts of terrorism or war crimes. But Trump made denaturalization a priority during his first administration, including targeting anyone who merely had errors on their naturalization papers. The DOJ launched a new section focused on denaturalization and investigated some 700,000 naturalized citizens, resulting in 168 active denaturalization cases — more than under any other modern president. It's not clear how many of them were ultimately denaturalized and deported. Trump is now picking up where he left off. The administration has said that it will pursue these denaturalization cases in civil rather than criminal court proceedings. In such proceedings, individuals are not entitled to an attorney, and the legal bar for the administration to prove that a citizen did something to warrant denaturalization is lower than it would be in criminal court. There is also no limit on how long after naturalization the government can seek to revoke someone's citizenship. All of that raises due process concerns. 'Somebody might not know about the proceedings against them. There might be a good defense that they're not able to offer. There's no right to an attorney,' Burke Robinson said. 'It seems to me to be really problematic.' There's also the question of to what degree this Supreme Court will be willing to rein in Trump's denaturalization efforts. Its 2017 decision in Maslenjak v. United States maintained a high bar for denaturalization: The court found that an alleged misstatement in a Bosnian refugee's citizenship paperwork could not have kept them from becoming a citizen, even if it had been discovered before their naturalization, and could not be used as grounds to denaturalize them in criminal proceedings. That makes Burke Robinson 'somewhat hopeful that the court does take the issue very seriously.' 'But that was 2017,' she added. 'It is a different court now, so it's very hard to predict.'
