President Donald Trump’s administration has launched a plan to multiply denaturalization cases of naturalized U.S. citizens, The New York Times (NYT) reported.
Internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) guidelines call for its offices to refer between 100 and 200 cases per month to the Justice Department during fiscal year 2026, far higher than the historical average of just a dozen cases per year, the newspaper said.
Trump plans to multiply denaturalization cases
Denaturalization is a legal process that allows the government to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a person who obtained it fraudulently, or by concealing relevant facts during the naturalization process.
Although this tool has existed for decades, its use has been exceptional and reserved for cases of serious fraud or links to war crimes or terrorism, according to experts quoted by the NYT.
According to the New York daily’s report, the new guidelines are part of a broader strategy by the Trump Administration to tighten immigration policies.
These policies include travel restrictions and temporary visa and citizenship suspensions for persons from certain non-European countries.
The official goal, USCIS spokespersons said, is to combat immigration fraud, although the exact criteria for selecting cases have not been detailed.
Civil rights organizations and immigration lawyers warned that a massive expansion of denaturalizations could create a climate of fear among the millions of naturalized citizens in the United States, many of whom could see their basic rights challenged, according to the NYT.
So far, official figures show that denaturalization cases have been very low compared to the number of people obtaining citizenship each year, with hundreds of thousands of naturalizations compared to a traditionally low number of revocations.
With information from EFE