DOJ Aggressively Expands Denaturalization Proceedings Targeting Fraud and Concealed Criminal History
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a significant expansion of federal proceedings designed to strip United States citizenship from naturalized foreign nationals. Following a directive to prioritize civil denaturalization, federal prosecutors and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials are now operating under aggressive new targets to identify and prosecute individuals who concealed crimes or committed fraud during the naturalization process.
Expanded Enforcement and New Quotas
According to internal directives and reports surfacing this week, the administration has set a target of identifying between 100 and 200 denaturalization cases per month. This marks a massive escalation from historical norms; for comparison, previous efforts often resulted in fewer than 30 cases filed annually.
To meet these targets, USCIS is reportedly redeploying specialized officers to field offices across the country to scrutinize historical immigration files. The initiative operates under a broad mandate issued in a June 2025 memorandum by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, which instructed the DOJ’s Civil Division to “maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law.”
While denaturalization was historically reserved for war criminals, terrorists, and human rights violators, the new scope includes a much wider array of offenses. The expanded priority list now targets:
Financial Fraud: Individuals who committed fraud against the U.S. government (such as Medicaid or PPP loan fraud) or against private individuals and corporations.
Concealed Criminal History: Naturalized citizens who failed to disclose prior criminal records, including sex offenses and drug trafficking involvement, on their N-400 applications.
Gang Affiliation: Individuals with ties to transnational criminal organizations.
“Other” Referrals: A discretionary category allowing prosecutors to pursue cases deemed “sufficiently important,” raising the possibility of targeted enforcement based on tax irregularities or other administrative errors.
Civil vs. Criminal Proceedings
A critical component of this expansion is the DOJ’s reliance on civil denaturalization (8 U.S.C. § 1451) rather than criminal proceedings. In criminal cases, the government must prove guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and defendants are guaranteed legal counsel. In civil proceedings, the burden of proof is lower—”clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence”—and defendants are not entitled to a government-appointed attorney. This shift allows the government to process cases more rapidly and with fewer procedural hurdles.
Background on Denaturalization
Naturalization is generally considered a permanent status, granting foreign-born individuals the same rights as U.S.-born citizens. However, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, citizenship can be revoked if it was “illegally procured” or obtained by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.”
This current push builds upon previous initiatives like “Operation Janus,” which sought to identify individuals who used fraudulent fingerprints to obtain citizenship. However, the current strategy moves beyond identity fraud to substantive fraud, where the applicant was technically ineligible for citizenship due to conduct (such as criminal behavior or failure to pay taxes) that was hidden from adjudicators at the time.
Concerns and Objections
The aggressive ramp-up has drawn sharp criticism from legal scholars, civil rights groups, and immigration advocates.
Destabilizing Citizenship: Critics argue that this policy effectively creates a “second-class citizenship” for the nation’s 25 million naturalized Americans, whose status could be perpetually subject to government review.
Due Process Risks: Legal defense funds have raised alarms regarding the use of civil courts. Because there is no right to a public defender in civil denaturalization, low-income individuals may be unable to afford the high cost of a legal defense, potentially leading to default judgments and loss of status effectively by administrative fiat.
The “Slippery Slope”: Advocates fear that including broad categories like “financial fraud” or “other cases” could allow the government to strip citizenship for relatively minor infractions or bureaucratic errors that occurred years ago, rather than the serious crimes typically associated with denaturalization.
Resource Allocation: Opponents also question the utility of diverting substantial investigative resources to review decades-old paperwork when the immigration court system is already facing historic backlogs.
The DOJ maintains that the initiative is necessary to restore integrity to the legal immigration system, ensuring that the privilege of American citizenship is retained only by those who obtained it honestly and lawfully.
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