President Donald Trump speaks at a House Republican retreat on January 6, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photo credit: Alex Wong — Getty Images
President Donald Trump appears to be trying to redefine what it means to be an American citizen. Since returning to the White House, he has not only stepped up his immigration crackdown but also questioned the citizenship status of foreign-born U.S. citizens, raising widespread concerns about the potential weaponization of citizenship stripping.
Trump is particularly focused on Minnesota because of a wide-ranging investigation into fraud schemes targeting government-funded programs in the state. The president has used the scandal to target Minnesota’s Somali community and accuse them of “destroying” the country because some people of Somali descent were convicted of participating in the schemes. He seemed to start blaming the entire community rather than the individuals involved.
Trump cited members of the Somali community this week as saying his administration was considering stripping some Americans of their naturalization status. “If they’re not honest, I won’t hesitate to do that,” Trump told the New York Times. era in an interview conducted Wednesday night. “I think a lot of people from Somalia hate our country.”
While the Trump administration is actively working on criteria for stripping citizenship, the president has not specified which foreign-born groups are being targeted. Instead, he said: “If they should be denaturalized, I would be, yes.” Trump also did not specify what would be considered “worthy” of denaturalization proceedings, and whether he was referring to the current legal parameters for denaturalization.
Eryan Hanlon, an immigration attorney and partner at Greenwood Handlon Kendrick, said certain legal evidence is needed to seek denaturalization. “The Trump administration must prove they [the citizens] Either committing fraud or lying during the naturalization process — perhaps through a sham marriage, or concealing a felony or serious crime, or using a false name,” Hanlon said.
TIME has reached out to the White House for comment.
Immigration crackdown: A demonstrator waves an inverted American flag in front of a federal building and the U.S. Marine Corps on July 4, 2025 in Los Angeles, California, to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids directed by the Trump administration.Apu Gomez—Getty Images
This is far from the first time Trump and members of his team have used stripping of citizenship as part of an ongoing effort to crack down on immigration. December, in attendance fox and friendsWhite House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said the administration is “considering” revoking the citizenship of people of Somali descent if they are convicted in a fraud case. This somewhat echoes Trump’s own words, as he has previously said “send them back to where they came from,” referring to members of Minnesota’s Somali community.
Trump has even made personal threats.
He has expressed a desire to strip his American-born opponent of his U.S. citizenship, although it is unclear how he would legally seek to do so. The president has twice threatened to revoke the citizenship of New York-born comedian Rosie O’Donnell, one of his sparring partners for decades. O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland after Trump’s 2024 election victory, rejected his comments.
But Trump’s main focus is foreign-born U.S. citizens. He has previously questioned the citizenship of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a U.S. citizen in 2018. In December, he lashed out at Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia and became a U.S. citizen in 2000 at age 17. During a speech in Pennsylvania, Trump told an excited crowd: “We should tell her (Omar) to go away.” He then heard the crowd chant “send her back.”
If Trump follows through on his threats against foreign-born Americans, running on a platform of mass deportations, it would mark a major escalation in his immigration crackdown. In November, the president said he would end Temporary Protected Status (TPS program) for Somalis in Minnesota. After a shooting in Washington, D.C., in which National Guardsman Sarah Beckstrom was killed (an Afghan national emerged as the only suspect), Trump ordered a reexamination of green cards for people from 19 countries, including Somalia, entering the United States. The list of countries with full or partial travel restrictions was later expanded to 39.
Additionally, in December, internal documents provided by the Trump administration to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field offices reportedly pushed the monthly quota for denaturalizations to 2026. USCIS offices are required to provide “100-200 denaturalization cases per month to the Office of Immigration Prosecutions,” according to guidance obtained by The New York Times. era. The quota would significantly increase the number of cases filed to strip U.S. citizens of their citizenship, with 305 cases filed between 1990 and 2017 and an average of 11 cases per year before Trump took office, according to the National Immigration Forum. Caseloads were above average during Trump’s first term, with 42 cases filed per year under his administration.
Smita Dazzo, deputy legal director at HIAS, a U.S.-based organization that provides legal aid to refugees and asylum seekers, believes the Trump administration would have difficulty meeting the reported quotas if it wanted to. “I think it’s very unlikely that if this plan passes, especially on the scale that this administration wants it to, it won’t be subject to legal challenges,” she said, explaining that such cases would have to go through federal court.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., responded to reports of the quota push, denouncing “an attack on immigrants and their civil rights.”
“The Trump administration’s latest anti-immigrant attack is xenophobia disguised as policy. Stripping citizenship from Americans who have called this country home for years is abhorrent and cruel. All American citizens, regardless of where they were born, deserve all of our country’s constitutional protections,” he said.
What is the legal basis for stripping Americans of their citizenship?
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, naturalized Americans can have their citizenship revoked only if “there is intentional deception, misrepresentation or failure to disclose a material fact, or failure to disclose one or more facts during the naturalization application and subsequent review.”
Dazzo said denaturalization is rare because all naturalized citizens have already passed immigration interviews and green card applications. She added that in her 16 years of legal practice, she had never seen a client denationalized.
Successful cases of deprivation of citizenship depend mostly on whether a misrepresentation was knowingly made and that misrepresentation resulted in the person in question being granted citizenship, or whether the citizenship was obtained illegally.
Naturalized citizens can also have their status revoked if they become members or affiliates of the Communist Party, other totalitarian parties or terrorist organizations within five years of naturalization.
USCIS will submit such cases for dismissal if there is “sufficient evidence that the person is subject to one of the grounds for dismissal.” There is no statute of limitations on the cases, according to the Justice Department, which created a division dedicated to denaturalization in 2020 during Trump’s first administration.
However, the Trump administration cannot legally revoke a person’s citizenship because of a crime they committed. “Deprivation of citizenship is not a punishment for a criminal conviction. The two are not related,” Dazo said.
“If someone commits fraud in advance If they fail to disclose this information in their naturalization application, their citizenship could be revoked, Dazo said. Because that would be considered a failure to disclose a material fact, Dazo said. Hanlon agreed: “It has to be fraud at the time the citizenship was obtained, not whether the person committed a crime afterward.” “
The legal basis raises questions about the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to find ways to strip citizenship from any foreign-born American convicted in the Minnesota fraud case.
In light of this, Dazzo worries that the Trump administration might look for small details in previous citizenship applications and view them as intentional misrepresentations.
“They may find any mistake that may have been made, no matter how trivial, and then claim that this is a gross misrepresentation worthy of revocation of their citizenship,” Dazo said.
Hanlon also cautioned that the Trump administration might extend the grounds for revoking citizenship.
“If someone accidentally writes the wrong date of birth on an application and the government wants to revoke their citizenship, could that be twisted into fraud when in fact it was a spelling error?” she pointed out.
Another concern is the possibility of eventual deportation.
“U.S. citizens cannot be deported, even if they originally immigrated here from somewhere else. But when someone is denaturalized, they revert to green card holder status. As a green card holder, you able deported,” Dazo said, emphasizing the dangers of depriving someone of their citizenship.
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