Is American citizenship still a permanent shield for those who earn it, or has it become a privilege that can be quietly taken away? That’s the provocative question swirling after the Department of Justice’s latest memo, which puts denaturalization—stripping naturalized citizens of their hard-won status—at the top of its civil enforcement priorities.
The memo, issued June 11, signals a major shift: DOJ attorneys are now directed to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence,” as Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote. This is not just about going after war criminals or terrorists. The policy carves out ten broad categories, ranging from serious human rights abusers to those convicted of financial fraud or accused of lying on immigration forms according to The Guardian.
What’s changed isn’t just the targets—it’s the process. The DOJ is leaning heavily on civil denaturalization, which, unlike criminal cases, does not guarantee the right to a government-appointed attorney and operates under a lower burden of proof. As Case Western law professor Cassandra Burke Robertson told NPR, “stripping Americans of citizenship through civil litigation violates due process and infringes on the rights guaranteed by the 14th Amendment” (NPR). In these civil cases, the government only needs to prove its case by “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence,” not beyond a reasonable doubt as outlined by immigration attorneys.
The human impact is already being felt. On June 13, a judge revoked the citizenship of Elliott Duke, a U.S. military veteran from the U.K., after it was revealed that Duke had concealed a conviction for distributing child sexual abuse material before naturalizing. Duke, who had renounced U.K. citizenship to become American, is now stateless. “My heart shattered when I read the lines [of the order]. My world broke apart,” Duke told NPR (NPR).
Duke’s case is not an isolated incident. The DOJ has ramped up denaturalization filings since the Obama administration’s Operation Janus, which used digital tools to uncover old cases of naturalization fraud. But under Trump, the approach has become far more aggressive and sweeping. In 2017 alone, the DOJ filed at least 30 denaturalization cases—twice as many as the year before Axios. Now, over 25 million naturalized Americans are watching anxiously as old records and minor infractions come under renewed scrutiny.
The constitutional stakes are enormous. The Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in Afroyim v. Rusk declared that denaturalization “is inconsistent with the American form of democracy, because it creates two levels of citizenship,” Robertson explained to NPR. Yet, the DOJ’s memo appears to revive McCarthy-era tactics, when denaturalization was used as a political weapon—at its peak, the government filed about 22,000 denaturalization cases a year (NPR).
Civil denaturalization proceedings are especially fraught. Individuals can lose their citizenship—and face deportation—without the safeguards of a criminal trial. As immigration attorney Sameera Hafiz put it, “It is kind of, in a way, trying to create a second class of U.S. citizens” The Guardian. The ripple effects can devastate families: children who derived citizenship from a denaturalized parent may lose their status too, leaving entire households in limbo (Shautsova Law).
The DOJ’s expanded criteria also empower attorneys to pursue denaturalization for “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.” Steve Lubet, professor emeritus at Northwestern Law, warns that “many of the categories are so vague as to be meaningless. It isn’t even clear that they relate to fraudulent procurement, as opposed to post-naturalization conduct” NPR.
For naturalized citizens, the message is clear: the permanence of citizenship can no longer be taken for granted. Even decades-old omissions or minor misstatements on a naturalization application can now trigger life-altering consequences. The anxiety is palpable, especially among those who once believed that earning U.S. citizenship meant full membership and equal protection under the law as chronicled by Vox.
As legal scholars and advocates debate the constitutional limits of these new policies, families like Duke’s face the very real prospect of losing everything they thought was secure. The DOJ’s memo has not only reshaped immigration enforcement—it’s redefining what it means to belong in America.
