WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to revoke the U.S. citizenship of foreign-born Americans in an effort to curb immigration, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Over the past few months, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency responsible for legal immigration under the Department of Homeland Security, has been sending experts or reassigning staff to offices across the country to focus on whether some citizens processed through those offices may now be denaturalized, people familiar with the matter said.
The goal of emphasizing naturalized citizenship is to provide 100 to 200 potential cases to the Office of Immigration Litigation each month, a person familiar with the matter said. Such cases are typically very rare and involve people who conceal criminal histories or previous human rights violations during the application process. The quota was first reported by The New York Times.
By comparison, during the four years of President Donald Trump’s first term, the government formally filed a total of 102 such cases, according to the Justice Department.
The effort is part of a broader push by the Department of Homeland Security to significantly reduce immigration and implement Trump’s policy agenda. The move includes the Department of Homeland Security sending dozens of immigration enforcement agents to U.S. cities to carry out deportations and purchasing large warehouses to hold detainees.
The Department of Homeland Security has also increasingly sought to expel legal immigrants from the United States by revoking thousands of visas, including some for those participating in pro-Palestinian protests, and has sought to deport green card holders.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew Trajser said the agency reviews cases of naturalized citizens if there is credible evidence that citizenship was obtained through fraud or misrepresentation.
“We have a zero-tolerance policy for fraud in the naturalization process and will pursue denaturalization proceedings against any individual who lies or misrepresents,” he said. “We will continue to relentlessly pursue those who undermine the integrity of the U.S. immigration system and work with the Department of Justice to ensure that only those who meet the citizenship standards retain the privileges of U.S. citizenship.”
Trump administration officials are looking for shortcuts to speed up the process, two people familiar with the matter said. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials have concluded that more cases can be eradicated more effectively than at a warehouse in Pasadena, California, where Trump was previously headquartered, either by sending experts or by training them in the agency’s more than 80 field offices across the country.
The Justice Department has told attorneys to focus on denaturalization cases, offering possible examples ranging from “individuals who pose a risk to national security” or who have committed war crimes or torture, to those who have committed Medicaid or Medicare fraud or otherwise defrauded the government.
There is also a broad catch-all provision that refers to “any other case the department deems important enough to pursue.”
These cases often extend beyond the scope of the presidential administration. The Trump administration won 86 cases during Trump’s first term, according to the Justice Department. During the Biden administration, a total of 54 cases were won.
Trump has long focused on the concept of citizenship — who can be an American and who can’t — and has railed against immigrants from what he calls third-world countries. He is separately seeking to strip citizenship from foreigners born in the United States, even though “birthright citizenship” appears in the Constitution. The Supreme Court is weighing his arguments.
Trump’s social message of truth to Americans last Thanksgiving was that he would deport anyone who was not America’s “net worth” or incapable of loving our country, end all federal benefits and subsidies to non-citizens of our country, revoke the citizenship of immigrants who disrupt domestic tranquility, and deport any alien who posed a public charge, a security risk, or was incompatible with Western civilization.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, approximately 800,000 people become naturalized citizens each year. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Act, to become a naturalized citizen, a candidate must be at least 18 years old, already a lawful permanent resident, speak English, understand U.S. history and social studies, and have “good moral character.”
Foreign-born Americans are typically stripped of their citizenship only if fraud is discovered during the application process. Over the past few decades, these cases have focused on uncovering former Nazis who fled to the United States under false pretenses after World War II. A former USCIS official said both Democratic and Republican administrations have tried to step up investigations, but there’s a reason why they remain rare.
“It’s important for current and future naturalized U.S. citizens to know that no president can unilaterally take away people’s hard-earned citizenship,” said Doug Rand, another former USCIS official.
The process of denationalization is long and time-consuming, and the legal thresholds are high. Even if the government pushes to investigate someone for the purpose of stripping citizenship, it can take years, and subsequent deportation even longer.
“Takening away from citizenship is an important tool that should be used in rare circumstances,” said Sarah Pierce, an immigration policy analyst who served as a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service official under former President Joe Biden.
Pierce said immigration authorities have wide discretion when deciding to approve someone for citizenship, so people who were not flagged for issues when becoming citizens may now face additional scrutiny.
She said there were concerns that some of the Trump administration’s immigration policy changes could “make some naturalized citizens vulnerable to claims of retroactive fraud or misrepresentation.”
Republican lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would allow the government to strip citizenship from anyone found to have committed fraud against the government or joined a terrorist organization or committed a serious felony within ten years of being granted citizenship.
So far in Trump’s second term, 16 cases have been filed and the government has won seven, including one involving a man from the United Kingdom who was convicted of receiving and distributing sexually explicit images of children.
Some clients who were awaiting naturalization applications when the new policy took effect were denied because they owed back taxes, even though they had payment plans, said Deborah Chen, an attorney in charge of New York Legal Aid Group’s Immigration Protection Services program.
She added that this could be a sign that immigration officials may be seeking more evidence of “good moral character”, which they demonstrate by showing “positive qualities” such as family care, educational attainment, stable employment and community involvement.
There are growing concerns that Homeland Security’s efforts are more about instilling fear than successfully stripping citizenship. Even if Americans caught up in the investigation are not indicted or convicted, the process takes a financial and emotional toll; they must hire lawyers and produce documents.
Maggie O’Herron, a senior fellow in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said the mere threat of stripping citizenship can cause real terror.
“Citizens fear that if they do or say things the government doesn’t like — even if those things are legal and protected by the Constitution — they will be targeted,” she said.
On January 21, a teenage girl was arrested after a collision with a Border Patrol vehicle in Minneapolis. (Stephen Matlen/Getty Images)
(played by Stephen Mattern)
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com