The Department of Justice is overseeing the next stage in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown: stripping citizenship from naturalized citizens. Regrettably, it’s not surprising that we’ve reached this point, though it is still horrifying.
In a June 11 memo, DOJ attorneys were told to prioritize denaturalization in cases where a naturalized citizen has committed certain crimes. Approximately 25 million Americans are naturalized citizens—individuals who were not born in the United States but have obtained full citizenship.
Protesters in California hold signs that read, “No one is illegal on stolen land,” and “Immigrants are the heartbeat of LA.”
That’s a rich trove of potential deportees for an administration driven by dead-eyed demon Stephen Miller’s demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest 3,000 people per day. ICE agents have already resorted to arresting immigrants when they show up for scheduled court appearances and detaining people on church grounds. And raids of Home Depot stores netted not the fearsome criminal gang masterminds that Trump insists are everywhere, but instead day laborers looking for work.
Typically, very few denaturalization cases are brought each year, but Trump started ramping up those efforts during his first term, establishing a Denaturalization Section within the DOJ and increasing its investigations of U.S. citizens. Denaturalization was typically reserved for deporting literal Nazis who concealed their past when obtaining citizenship. The last time it was used by the government on a large scale was during the Red Scare in the 1940s and 1950s.
In 1942, Attorney General Francis Biddle called denaturalization “a most important weapon in dealing with organized subversive and disloyal activities,” and individuals were denaturalized for being suspected of having communist sympathies.
The DOJ memo lists the crimes that can result in denaturalization, including having engaged in torture, espionage, or human trafficking. But then there’s a catch-all. A really bad catch-all. Besides the listed crimes, the DOJ can pursue “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
Related | Trump’s birthright citizenship gamble is as dumb as it is dangerous
In case it’s not clear that this provision is meant to allow the DOJ to denaturalize someone for any or no reason at all, the memo goes on to say that the listed criminal categories “do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case” and the Civil Division “retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate.”
Additionally, the Trump administration plans to handle denaturalization cases in civil court rather than criminal. That means that there’s a lower burden of proof for the government and that the person facing denaturalization does not have the right to an attorney.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio
This looks a lot like Secretary of States Marco Rubio’s vague yet vast authority to expel people for “past, current, or expected beliefs.” But while Rubio’s authority is limited to revoking visas, the DOJ can go after naturalized citizens, opening up a new front in Trump’s war on immigrants.
There’s really nothing the Trump administration won’t do to attack immigrants. The nativist impulses that animate this administration mean that Trump hates legal immigrants as much as illegal ones—save, of course, for South Africans and former models.
And Vice President JD Vance is just a straight-up Great Replacement theorist who smeared Haitians in Ohio, saying that they were illegal immigrants who abducted and ate pets. He even declared that Haitians here legally were “illegal aliens” who should be deported.
Of course, the Trump administration was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants who’ve committed violent crimes. And it was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants with no criminal records or immigrants with temporary legal status.
The inevitable next step was to strip citizenship from those who already have it. And after that, who knows? But rest assured Trump will figure out another way to hurt people.
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