Denaturalization vows collide with legal reality

A Trump administration pledge to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans has set off fear among advocates, but the denaturalization cases filed and resolved so far appear narrower than the rhetoric suggests—bounded by due-process protections, evidentiary

When the Trump administration promised to ramp up revocations of citizenship for some naturalized Americans. the message landed like a threat in the country’s immigrant communities. Advocates. legal scholars. and naturalized citizens worried about abuse—and about a precedent that naturalized immigrants could end up treated as a separate class from U.S.-born Americans.

But the cases filed so far, even as they have triggered intense debate, look harder to scale up than the vow implied.

NPR reviewed 34 publicly announced denaturalization cases filed or resolved by the Department of Justice as of May 19. including 11 revocations of citizenship. Daniel Kanstroom. a professor of law at Boston College who specializes in immigration. said he is not seeing a sudden surge that matches the administration’s warning tone. “I’m not seeing a major surge of worrisome denaturalizations. To me, it’s not at the level of an emergency,” he said.

The administration, meanwhile, has framed denaturalization as another tool to double down on immigration enforcement and shore up border security. In a statement. a DOJ spokesman said: “The Department of Justice is laser-focused on rooting out criminal aliens defrauding the naturalization process.” The spokesman added: “We are moving at warp speed to ensure fraudsters are held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent.”.

In May, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche echoed that focus in a speech at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, saying the department was “trying to protect the integrity of the naturalization process.” Supporters say that mission goes to the heart of what citizenship means.

Gene Hamilton, president of the nonprofit conservative group America First Legal, argued the work should have been happening already. “If you’re a serious government. if you’re a serious nation. one of your foremost duties is to protect the citizenry and protect the meaning and the value of citizenship. ” he said.

Yet experts who study denaturalization say the system’s design makes sweeping, mass revocations far more difficult than the rhetoric suggests.

Kanstroom said the due-process protections for naturalized U.S. citizens are substantial. “These are cases in which the law is pretty clear that people are entitled to due process. They’re entitled to be heard by a federal judge, not just an immigration judge. So the protections in place for people facing denaturalization are pretty robust,” he said.

Cassandra Robertson. a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. largely agreed the cases brought so far are hard to pursue broadly. But she said the wider implications still worry her. Robertson argued that denaturalization efforts can be used beyond the traditional boundaries. “The denaturalization efforts are an attempt to suppress the political speech of naturalized citizens,” she said. “Although the cases that have been brought first are maybe people who’ve committed some pretty bad crimes. the government’s rhetoric is certainly not limited to that.”.

The DOJ did not respond to most of NPR’s questions for this story.

What the cases so far have looked like—and why scaling them up isn’t straightforward—shows up in the allegations at the center of many proceedings. Denaturalization cases are historically rare. and they typically target people accused of concealing serious criminal conduct or illegal affiliations with terrorist groups while going through the naturalization process.

In the 34 cases reviewed by NPR, the allegations include fraud, child sexual abuse, terrorism-related activity, war crimes, and drug trafficking. In court filings. the DOJ argued that defendants concealed conduct that would have disqualified them from demonstrating the “good moral character” required for citizenship.

One example is Melchor Munoz. The DOJ revoked Munoz’s citizenship after arguing he lied and concealed that he was dealing drugs during his naturalization process. His attorney, Joe Pace, disputed the claim. Pace said the government relied heavily on inaccuracies in an old plea agreement that stated Munoz began dealing drugs before becoming a citizen. Pace said the conduct actually began afterward, meaning his client should not have been subject to denaturalization. Pace also said Munoz, whose English is limited, was badly advised by his criminal lawyer at the time.

After a two-day trial, a federal judge sided with the DOJ, finding Munoz’s “testimony not credible.” Munoz lives in Florida and is now on a green card. He plans to appeal.

Even with cases moving forward. Kanstroom said the publicly announced denaturalization cases so far are on par with cases the U.S. government might have pursued in prior administrations. He said he is reassured that each case has been assigned to judges in federal districts across the country. that the cases are moving through the regular civil or criminal docket. and that overall they are “happening within the parameters of the law.”.

Robertson said the government appears to be intentionally picking cases with criminal convictions because those cases are easier to win. She still said she fears where the policy could go.

Her concern is not only about what the government is doing now. but about what it could do later if it leans more heavily on civil denaturalization rather than criminal proceedings. Robertson pointed out a critical difference: civil denaturalization cases come with fewer protections. Defendants in civil cases are not entitled to appointed attorneys if they cannot afford them. Civil denaturalization cases generally have no statute of limitations.

“When we’re talking about things that happened 20 or 30 or even more years ago. it is incredibly hard for anybody to be able to find witnesses who knew what was going on at that time. or have any kind of documentary evidence. ” Robertson said. describing how the passage of time can leave defendants vulnerable to evidence they cannot effectively challenge.

In several of the NPR-reviewed cases, defendants lacked legal representation.

One such case involved Vladimir Volgaev, a native of Ukraine who became a U.S. citizen in 2016. In 2020, he was convicted of smuggling gun components from the U.S. to people in Ukraine and Italy. He was also convicted of theft of government money or property by underreporting his assets and income on applications for federal housing benefits. according to the DOJ.

In a case filed in September. the DOJ claimed Volgaev concealed and misrepresented his involvement in the smuggling operation during his naturalization process and thus should lose citizenship. A summons was issued. but neither Volgaev nor an attorney made a court appearance or filed a response. court records show. Volgaev’s citizenship was revoked on March 23.

Another case, involving Elliott Duke, showed how lack of representation can combine with timing and confinement. The DOJ sued Duke while Duke was already serving time in federal prison for distributing child pornography during Duke’s time in the U.S. Army. The DOJ filed the case in February 2025. and a federal judge ruled to revoke Duke’s citizenship roughly four months later. Duke, who uses they/them pronouns, told NPR they were unable to get a lawyer or travel to attend hearings.

Robertson. speaking about the legal stakes beyond the individual defendants. said she might not feel sympathy for everyone accused in such cases—but she worried about what the precedent does to the broader system. “It’s just a dangerous road to go down for denaturalization. I might not feel sorry for the heinous child abuser who loses their citizenship. I’m not going to lose sleep over that,” she said. “But I am going to lose sleep over what it does to the system. Because once it becomes easy to take somebody’s citizenship away — it becomes easy to take anybody’s citizenship away.”.

Behind the scenes, the administrative capacity required to pursue more cases is also a major constraint.

As the DOJ faces an exodus of thousands of skilled lawyers, the department has assigned denaturalization cases to U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country, a person familiar with this information confirmed. The person was not authorized to speak publicly. The offices of U.S. attorneys are now tasked with handling hundreds of cases of foreign-born Americans the department has identified as potential cases for revoking citizenship. The DOJ did not respond to specific questions about these cases.

Stacey Young, founder of Justice Connection, an organization of former DOJ staffers, said denaturalization cases demand significant resources. Young said the cases require “a huge expenditure of time and resources,” which she said helps explain why the DOJ historically filed relatively few of them.

“The recent plans for escalation are unprecedented and will require an immense amount of time and work by lawyers who are already stretched thin right now,” Young said.

Hamilton, arguing for more pursuit, said the work is worth the investment. “It is exactly what the government should be doing. And quite frankly, I would like to see even more resources devoted to it as they’re able to do so,” he said.

The push to escalate also raises another fear: politicization.

Former DOJ attorneys, including Young, worry that prioritizing denaturalization cases could turn into retaliation against perceived enemies of the administration. They point to accusations that the current Justice Department has already engaged in that kind of maneuvering.

Robertson pointed to comments from Trump and others in the administration threatening the citizenship of political opponents—such as New York City Mayor Mamdani and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar—as evidence of a potential threat that denaturalization could be used as a tool for “political retribution.”

A former DOJ attorney who worked for nearly a decade in the Office of Immigration Litigation—which handles denaturalization cases—agreed with that concern. saying the retaliatory risk is serious. The attorney spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the federal government. “The retaliatory nature of this administration and using the law in any type of legal maneuvering to go after its enemies — that is a serious concern of mine. ” the attorney said.

This attorney said that previously, attorneys in the office were given discretion to decide what cases to pursue. “But things changed under the Trump administration and the mandate became to pursue anyone potentially eligible. even for minor paperwork errors or immaterial discrepancies. ” the attorney said.

The attorney also said department leaders pressured lawyers to generate cases quickly, sometimes by combing through news stories or social media posts involving naturalized citizens. The attorney said they left the DOJ last year.

Kanstroom. while cautious. said he does not see denaturalization becoming politicized in the near term because the cases remain legally and practically harder than other immigration enforcement. He said defendants can challenge evidence and appeal rulings. and that federal judges—rather than immigration judges employed by the DOJ—oversee these cases.

“I certainly don’t see an easy pathway for this administration to fast-track denaturalizations or do end runs around the judiciary,” Kanstroom said.

For now. the most striking contradiction is the distance between the administration’s language of sweeping action and the reality of a process that still depends on federal judges. due process. and a difficult fight for evidence—especially when the government tries to reach back years. or when defendants are left without counsel. The legal road is narrow enough that. for the moment. the cases appear to be staying within known boundaries—even as critics warn how easily those boundaries could blur later.

denaturalization citizenship revocation naturalized Americans Department of Justice Trump administration due process federal judges immigration enforcement legal scholars Daniel Kanstroom Cassandra Robertson Melchor Munoz Vladimir Volgaev Elliott Duke