President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice will begin to “prioritize” denaturalization cases against certain American immigrants, potentially stripping them of their citizenship.
The department will “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence,” according to a June 11 memo. The move is nominally intended to target individuals who lied about prior crimes or criminal affiliations during the citizenship application process.
The order stipulates that the DOJ will prosecute individuals who “pose a potential danger to national security, including those with a nexus to terrorism, espionage, or the unlawful export from the United States of sensitive goods, technology, or information raising national security concerns.” Included in the list are human traffickers, financial criminals, sex criminals, and many others. The decision could affect up to 25 million Americans, or 7% of the entire U.S. population.
Legal experts are concerned with the scope of these aims. Sameera Hafiz, policy director of the Immigration Legal Resource Center, called the move “very shocking and very concerning.”
“To see that this administration is plotting out how they’re going to expand its use in ways that we have not seen before is very shocking and very concerning,” Hafiz told NPR. “It is kind of, in a way, trying to create a second class of U.S. citizens,” she said, expressing concern that the expanded scope would create a citizenship policy of haves and have-nots.
Complicating the matter is the decision by DOJ to pursue citizenship cases through its Civil Division. In denaturalization hearings in civil court, a defendant is not entitled to an attorney. On top of this, the burden of proof on the government is lessened, and court cases often reach conclusions much faster as a result.
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The DOJ’s move comes at a time when American citizenship has become a legal grey area. A Supreme Court decision on Friday opened the way for the federal government to potentially restrict birthright citizenship in the country.
“There it has remained, accepted and respected by Congress, by the Executive, and by this Court. Until today,” dissenting justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote. “With the stroke of a pen,” Sotomayor wrote, “the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution.”
Denaturalization has been used by the federal government in different capacities through the country’s history. In the 1950s, the rise of McCarthyism saw it used to accuse suspected communists of plotting against America, resulting in the Hollywood blacklists.
In 2016, the Obama administration launched Operation Janus, meant to target individuals it believed posed “a risk to national security.” This led to a controversial case involving Rasmea Odeh, a former member of a militant group in Palestine. After a long investigation and numerous trials, Odeh was deported in 2021, citing her possible connection to a 1969 bombing in Jerusalem.
During Trump’s first presidency, the rate of denaturalization investigations rose sharply, with thousands of cases examined and hundreds of former citizens ultimately deported.
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