The Trump administration reportedly wants to denaturalize at least 250 Americans this year, stripping them of their citizenship and priming them for deportation.
This would represent a massive spike in denaturalization cases.
The Biden administration filed just 24 denaturalization cases across four years, and there were 166 of these cases put on the books between 2008 and June 2026.
Denaturalization cases and complicated and time-consuming, and past administrations have focused on pursuing them against individuals guilty of serious crimes or fraud in the citizenship process.
“People who got a parking ticket — that’s not going to be somebody that we’re going to focus our resources on and may not even qualify for denaturalization under the statute,” a senior DOJ official told CNN, which first reported on the plan. “It’s really about finding people who have committed serious fraud against the United States and identifying those individuals and proceeding as quickly as we can.”
The effort to ramp up denaturalizations has led the DOJ to pull attorneys from other duties, CNN reports.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has also reportedly transferred agency lawyers to the DOJ to assist with the effort.
Justice Department officials have compiled a wider list of at least 385 citizens who are targets for denaturalization, The New York Times reported in April.
President Donald Trump has been signaling since he returned to office that a denaturalization crackdown was in the works.
In a January 2025 executive order, he called on federal officials to focus on denaturalizations, and a June 2025 DOJ memo urged the department’s attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings.”
The Independent has contacted the DOJ for comment.
The administration has failed to hit its high immigration targets before.
Immigration officials reportedly urged agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol to carry out 3,000 immigration arrests per day, though the administration has not yet hit that goal.
The Trump administration has used a variety of methods to make seeking U.S. residency more difficult.
It is looking to force temporary immigrants seeking green cards to wait in their home countries as they seek permanent U.S. residency, a decision that could add years of delay and separation from their family members for those hoping to return to the country.
The administration also functionally shut down the asylum process, though a federal judge struck down a slate of asylum moves earlier this month, targeting policies that blocked asylum, delayed or denied green card applications, and slowed citizenship hearings for nationals of roughly 40 countries.
The ruling found that the administration had illegally discriminated against “countless” immigrants by categorically barring asylum seekers, green card applicants and people seeking citizenship “solely by the happenstance of their birth.”
The administration is also reportedly developing a plan to fast-track asylum rejections by skipping the traditional asylum interview in some cases.
Most strikingly, the administration is seeking to end the constitutionally protected right of birthright citizenship via executive order.
The Supreme Court is currently reviewing the policy.
