Donald Trump came into his second term with a bold promise — strip citizenship from hundreds of foreign-born Americans he deemed unworthy of it. His administration compiled a list of 385 targets, pressured attorneys to take on transfers and called itself 'laser-focused' on rooting out fraud in the naturalisation process. It was the kind of sweeping, hardline rhetoric that defined his return to the White House.
But the reality playing out in federal courts is a great deal quieter. Since the start of Trump's second term, the Department of Justice has filed just35 denaturalisation cases. And a close look at those cases suggests the administration's bark is considerably worse than its bite.
An NPR examination of 34 denaturalisation cases publicly announced by the DOJ revealed that the charges brought are far more limited in scope than the White House's tough talk implies, exposing just how much legal and procedural friction stands in the way of a mass citizenship purge.
Boston College law professorDaniel Kanstroom, who specialises in immigration law, said: 'I'm not seeing a major surge of worrisome denaturalisations. To me, it's not at the level of an emergency.'
In the last 16 months, the Trump Justice Department says it has surpassed the number of cases filed during all four years of the Biden administration, with 64 cases according to available data. That figure, however, remains a far cry from the administration's reported ambitions. A document circulated to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Department outlined a plan to denaturalise100 to 200people per month in 2026, with USCIS expected to work alongside the DOJ to meet that quota.
🚨🇺🇸#BREAKING: Trump announces revoking citizenships:"We're also going to revoke citizenship of any nautralized immigrant, from Somalia or anywhere else, who is convicted of defrauding our citizens."pic.twitter.com/mN59BMLi86
The gap between the White House's ambitions and its courtroom record is not accidental — it is structural. Naturalised US citizens carry far stronger legal protections than undocumented immigrants, and denaturalisation cases must be heard by federal judges rather than immigration judges employed by the executive branch.
'I certainly don't see an easy pathway for this administration to fast-track denaturalisations or do end runs around the judiciary,' one legal expert told NPR.
Case Western Reserve University law professorCassandra Robertsonpointed to another practical problem. She noted that when dealing with 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,' leaving defendants vulnerable to flimsy evidence.
Robertson also raised concerns that extend well beyond individual cases. She told NPR: 'It's just a dangerous road to go down for denaturalisation. I might not feel sorry for the heinous child abuser who loses their citizenship. I'm not going to lose sleep over that. But I am going to lose sleep over what it does to the system.'
Source: International Business Times UK
