Politics
Trump’s DOJ Moved to Revoke Citizenship From 17 Americans
By Mike Harper · June 9, 2026
The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution has guaranteed birthright and naturalized citizenship since 1868. The Trump administration filed 17 cases on Monday to revoke it — the largest single-day denaturalization push in American history.
The Department of Justice filed in federal courts across multiple districts to strip citizenship from 17 naturalized Americans accused of immigration fraud, in what officials described as the opening move of a broader effort to use denaturalization more aggressively than any prior administration. The cases were coordinated across federal districts and filed simultaneously, a logistical signal that the DOJ has been building the docket for months.
Denaturalization — the legal process of revoking citizenship from a naturalized American — has historically been rare. The government has typically pursued it only in cases involving war criminals, terrorists, or people who actively concealed disqualifying crimes when they applied for citizenship. The total number of denaturalization cases filed in the entire decade from 2010 to 2020 was fewer than 200, according to Justice Department historical data. Monday’s 17 cases in a single day represents a deliberate departure from that pace.
The 17 individuals targeted are accused of various forms of immigration fraud — misrepresenting their backgrounds, concealing criminal history, or providing false information on naturalization applications. The DOJ has not released the names of all defendants or full details of each case, citing ongoing proceedings. At least several of the cases involve people who became citizens years or decades ago and have lived as Americans since.
The constitutional question the effort will eventually force a court to answer is significant. The Supreme Court held in the 1967 case Afroyim v. Rusk that Congress cannot strip citizenship from Americans without their consent. The government’s argument is that denaturalization is different — that citizenship obtained through fraud was never valid to begin with, and revoking it is not stripping something legitimately held. Courts have generally accepted that framework in individual cases. Whether they accept it at scale, applied aggressively across a coordinated campaign, is untested territory.
Trump’s immigration policy team has said publicly that denaturalization is a tool the government has underused and that it plans to use it more. Monday’s filings were the first concrete demonstration of what that means in practice.