Ep 134 - What Is Citizenship Worth?

There is a moment in the naturalization process when the paperwork ends and the promise begins. A person raises a hand, takes the oath, and becomes an American citizen. From that point forward, they are supposed to be something more than an immigrant who was allowed to stay. They are supposed to be one of us. They vote. They work. They raise families. They pay taxes. They serve on juries, open businesses, teach children, wear uniforms, complain about potholes, and build ordinary lives. At some point, the story of how they arrived here is supposed to stop being the most important thing about them.

American citizenship shouldn’t come with an asterisk.

That is why the Trump administration’s rapidly expanding denaturalization campaign deserves more attention than it is getting. In early October, the Justice Department announced 40 new civil denaturalization cases and described the broader effort as the largest denaturalization campaign in modern American history. Those 40 cases are not the whole story. They are the latest chapter in a much larger expansion, one the department has celebrated with words like “record,” “historic,” “surge,” and, most tellingly, “only the beginning.”

The obvious response is also a fair one: if someone lied to obtain citizenship, why should they get to keep it? And the answer is that they should not automatically get to keep it. Denaturalization is not something Donald Trump invented. Federal law has long allowed the government to challenge citizenship when naturalization was illegally procured or obtained through concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation. If someone used a false identity, concealed disqualifying conduct, or fraudulently obtained citizenship, the government has a legitimate interest in proving that in court.

That distinction matters because denaturalization is not supposed to be punishment for later bad behavior. A naturalized American who commits a crime does not automatically lose citizenship. The government cannot simply say, “You robbed a bank ten years after becoming a citizen, so we are sending you back.” The legal question is whether the original naturalization was lawful. That is a very different standard, and it comes with court review, a heavy burden of proof, and longstanding judicial protections.

Some of the people in these new cases may be exactly the kinds of defendants denaturalization law was designed to address. DOJ has cited allegations involving fraud, concealed identities, espionage, sex offenses, manslaughter, and other serious conduct. Some defendants may turn out to be deeply unsympathetic. That is important to acknowledge, because the strongest criticism of this policy is not that every person targeted is an innocent victim. It is that something changes when denaturalization moves from an exceptional legal remedy into a major enforcement project.

That change is visible in the government’s own language. The Justice Department is not merely announcing individual cases. It is boasting about volume. It is emphasizing scale. It is measuring success by the number of complaints filed and describing the effort as historic. In 2025, the Civil Division was instructed to “prioritize and maximally pursue” denaturalization proceedings in cases supported by law and evidence. That phrase matters. It tells us that the government is not simply reacting when fraud happens to surface. It is deliberately making the search for more denaturalization cases a priority.

There is nothing inherently sinister about a government developing expertise, referral systems, or specialized offices to handle difficult cases. The underlying infrastructure did not begin yesterday. During the first Trump administration, USCIS and DOJ expanded systems for reviewing older naturalization cases, especially cases involving historical fingerprint records and false identities. Some of those efforts responded to real failures in the immigration system. But the current administration has taken that existing machinery and paired it with an explicit mandate to use it more aggressively.

That is where the philosophical problem begins. Legally, there is one American citizenship. Politically and psychologically, however, there is a meaningful difference between the citizen born here and the citizen who had to apply. A native-born American can commit an atrocious crime and generally remains an American. A naturalized American also remains an American merely because of later misconduct, but the original naturalization can still be challenged if the government can prove it was unlawfully obtained. There is a legal reason for that distinction. But there is also a human consequence to it.

One American may go through life never imagining that the government could reopen the question of whether he belongs here. Another knows there is a file somewhere documenting exactly how he became a citizen. That does not make naturalized citizenship legally inferior, and it does not mean lawfully obtained citizenship is temporary. But when the government makes searching backward through those files a national priority, it risks creating two different experiences of citizenship: one that feels unquestioned, and one that feels subject to review.

Citizenship should be a status, not a probationary period. That sentence is rhetorical, not literal. Lawfully obtained naturalized citizenship is not legally probationary. If the government cannot establish lawful grounds for denaturalization, citizenship should remain secure. The concern is not that the law says naturalized Americans are temporary citizens. The concern is that aggressive enforcement can make citizenship feel less permanent even when the law says otherwise.

And government power never exists in a political vacuum. That matters because the rise in denaturalization is happening at the same time that parts of American politics are becoming increasingly comfortable talking about Muslims, immigrants, and even elected officials as though some citizens can simply be sent away. That does not mean the current 40 cases are an anti-Muslim campaign. They are not evidence of one. The defendants come from many countries, DOJ does not identify them collectively by religion, and country of origin is not a substitute for religious identity.

Still, the surrounding rhetoric is impossible to ignore. Republican elected officials have openly discussed deporting Muslims, revoking citizenship “wherever possible,” and using denaturalization as a political slogan. Muslim members of Congress have been told to go back to where they came from, even when one of them was born in Detroit. When politicians begin speaking about American citizens as though citizenship can be erased by disapproval, the legal safeguards around citizenship become more important, not less.

That is why the distinction between rhetoric and power matters so much. A member of Congress can say something reckless. A television host can demand deportation. A president can sneer about where someone “belongs.” None of that, by itself, changes citizenship law. But institutions matter. Prosecutorial priorities matter. Investigative capacity matters. Offices, databases, referral systems, and legal theories remain long after one outrageous statement disappears from the news cycle.

The point is not to predict a purge. There is no evidence that the current 40 cases prove such a thing. The point is that government power should be judged not only by how it is being used today, but by what kind of machinery is being built for tomorrow. A legal power may be used properly in its first cases and still deserve scrutiny because of how broadly future officials may try to expand it.

Governments also tend to encounter the least resistance when expanded powers are first used against people nobody wants to defend. A spy is difficult to defend. A sex offender is difficult to defend. A fraudster is difficult to defend. Someone accused of lying to obtain citizenship may be difficult to defend. That is exactly why these are the moments when principles matter most.

If I say the government should have to prove its case before taking someone’s citizenship, that is not a defense of the defendant. It is a defense of the burden. If I say courts should remain involved and the legal standard should remain demanding, that is not sympathy for a fraudster. It is respect for the fact that citizenship is one of the most consequential legal statuses the government can recognize and one of the most consequential statuses it can try to undo.

Civil liberties are remarkably easy to surrender when the first person losing them is somebody you hate. The defendant eventually disappears from the story. The institution remains. The prosecutor moves on. The administration changes. The file system remains. The enforcement unit remains. The precedent remains. The machinery remains.

That brings us back to the person taking the oath. The immigrant becomes a permanent resident. The permanent resident becomes a citizen. The citizen becomes a voter, a neighbor, a worker, a parent, a veteran, a teacher, a business owner, maybe even an elected official. At what point do we stop putting an adjective in front of American?

If naturalization means anything, there has to be a moment when the country looks at someone and says, “You’re one of us now.” Fraud may invalidate that promise when the promise was obtained unlawfully. That is not the same thing as saying the promise should feel provisional for everyone else.

Citizenship should represent more than paperwork. It should represent membership, equality, belonging, and permanence. It should mean that the question of whether you are really one of us has finally been answered.

Becoming an American should mean crossing a line, not standing permanently beside one.

And if becoming an American does not eventually mean that your place here is secure, then we have to ask a much bigger question than whether some particular defendant deserves sympathy.

What exactly is American citizenship worth? 

SOURCES

DOJ announcement of 40 new civil denaturalization cases, October 5, 2026 - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-strip-citizenship-40-criminals-largest-single-period

DOJ announcement of 25 denaturalization cases; 123 complaints since January 20, 2025; Todd Blanche’s “only the beginning” statement - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-record-24-denaturalization-cases-against-naturalized-criminals

DOJ announcement of 10 denaturalization cases filed in July 2026 - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-revoke-us-citizenship-10-naturalized-criminals-including-child

DOJ Civil Division enforcement memo directing attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue” denaturalization cases - https://www.justice.gov/civil/media/1404046/dl

DOJ Justice Manual guidance on civil denaturalization and the Office of Immigration Litigation’s Enforcement Unit - https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-4-7000-immigration-litigation

DOJ Office of Immigration Litigation overview and current role in denaturalization litigation - https://www.justice.gov/civil/office-immigration-litigation

DOJ announcement creating a dedicated denaturalization section during the first Trump administration in 2020 - https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/department-justice-creates-section-dedicated-denaturalization-cases

USCIS remarks explaining the historical fingerprint-record problem, review of approximately 2,500 cases, and referrals to DOJ - https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/foia/Directors_Remarks_at_the_15th_Annual_Immigration_Law_and_Policy_Conference.pdf

Supreme Court decision in Kungys v. United States on material misrepresentation and the government’s evidentiary burden in denaturalization cases - https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/485/759

Supreme Court decision in Maslenjak v. United States on the required connection between unlawful conduct and obtaining naturalization - https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/16-309

Official U.S. Reports version of Maslenjak v. United States - https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USREPORTS-582/USREPORTS-582-335

DOJ case involving Melchor Munoz, whose citizenship was revoked after the court found he concealed pre-naturalization drug trafficking - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/district-court-revokes-us-citizenship-convicted-drug-dealer

DOJ example of a denaturalization case involving use of a false identity after a prior deportation order - https://www.justice.gov/usao-ks/pr/usao-ks-files-denaturalization-case-against-man-ordered-deported-then-used-false

Washington Post reporting on Rep. Randy Fine and other Republican lawmakers calling for mass expulsion of Muslims and citizenship revocations - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/12/15/republicans-muslim-mass-expulsions/

Washington Post reporting on Rep. Andy Ogles saying Muslims “don’t belong in American society” and supporting deportation of naturalized Muslim Americans - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/09/andy-ogles-anti-muslim-post/

Reuters reporting on Trump saying Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib should be removed from the United States - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-muslim-lawmakers-omar-tlaib-should-be-removed-us-after-speech-clash-2026-02-25/