The Trump administration has reportedly adopted an aggressive new internal target aimed at stripping U.S. citizenship from large numbers of naturalized Americans in fiscal year 2026, a move that immigration experts and former officials say represents a profound departure from decades of legal precedent and administrative practice.
According to reporting cited in the source material, new guidance issued Tuesday instructs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices to “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month” in the upcoming fiscal year. If implemented as written, the directive would amount to an effort to generate well over a thousand denaturalization cases in a single year, a scale that dwarfs historical norms.
Denaturalization has long been an extraordinary and rarely used legal measure. Justice Department figures referenced in the provided articles show that only about 120 denaturalization cases had been filed since 2017. Data from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center indicate that between 1990 and 2017, an average of approximately 11 denaturalization cases were opened per year nationwide. During the first Trump administration, when immigration enforcement intensified, the number reportedly rose to about 25 cases annually, still a fraction of what the new guidance appears to envision.
Under U.S. law, citizenship cannot be revoked by administrative fiat. Only federal courts have the authority to denaturalize a U.S. citizen, and the government must meet a high evidentiary standard. Denaturalization typically occurs only when prosecutors allege that citizenship was obtained illegally or through the misrepresentation of a material fact during the naturalization process. As noted in the Reuters reporting included in the source material, these cases often take years to resolve, further complicating efforts to scale them up rapidly.
Former government officials and legal experts have questioned whether the administration’s stated goal is even feasible within existing legal and institutional constraints. Morgan Bailey, a former Department of Homeland Security official, told Newsweek that it would be “virtually impossible” for agencies to process the volume of cases demanded by the guidance. Bailey also explained that lowering internal thresholds would not solve the problem, saying, “USCIS could send more cases to the Justice Department by lowering the threshold, but the DOJ’s burden and the standard required by the DOJ to bring these cases in federal court haven’t changed.”
The Department of Justice, which must litigate each denaturalization case before a federal judge, already faces significant resource constraints. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a fellow at the American Immigration Council, argued that imposing numerical targets risks overwhelming the system while sending a chilling message to immigrant communities. “Setting a quota for denaturalization is vicious and cruel, and designed to send a message of fear,” Reichlin-Melnick said on social media. He added, “But each case must be proved in front of a federal judge, and the DOJ is already stretched paper thin, so like [Stephen] Miller’s effort to do this in Trump 1.0 it may be more bark than bite.”
Former USCIS officials have also warned that the guidance transforms a narrowly tailored legal tool into something far more blunt. Sarah Pierce, a former USCIS official, told The New York Times, “Requiring monthly quotas that are 10 times higher than the total annual number of denaturalizations in recent years turns a serious and rare tool into a blunt instrument and fuels unnecessary fear and uncertainty for the millions of naturalized Americans.”
Beyond administrative capacity, critics point to deeper constitutional concerns. Citizenship, once granted, has been repeatedly described by the Supreme Court as a fundamental right that cannot be taken away lightly. Amanda Baran, a former USCIS policy chief, emphasized this principle in comments to The New York Times. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that citizenship and naturalization are too precious and fundamental to our democracy for the government to take it away on their whim,” Baran said. She also criticized the agency’s priorities, adding, “Instead of wasting resources digging through Americans’ files, USCIS should do its job of processing applications, as Congress mandated.”
The denaturalization initiative fits within a broader immigration agenda pursued by the Trump administration. According to the source material, this agenda has included travel bans, an attempt to end birthright citizenship, and a recent pause on immigration applications, including green card and U.S. citizenship processing, filed by immigrants from 19 non European countries. A Justice Department memo cited in the provided articles states that the administration intends to “maximally pursue” denaturalization efforts, targeting individuals it “determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
USCIS officials have defended the policy by framing it as part of a campaign against fraud. A USCIS spokesperson told Reuters that it was not a secret the agency’s “war on fraud” prioritized individuals who unlawfully obtained U.S. citizenship, particularly under the previous administration. The spokesperson stated, “We will pursue denaturalization proceedings for those individuals lying or misrepresenting themselves during the naturalization process.”
Advocates counter that fraud enforcement does not justify the use of quotas in a process that demands individualized judicial review. They argue that setting numerical targets risks pressuring officials to pursue marginal cases, potentially sweeping in long time citizens whose applications may contain minor errors rather than intentional deception.
As the administration prepares for fiscal year 2026, the gap between the stated denaturalization targets and the realities of federal court review remains stark. While the guidance itself does not revoke citizenship, it signals a willingness to test the outer boundaries of immigration enforcement. For millions of naturalized Americans, the announcement has raised new questions about the permanence of citizenship in an era of increasingly aggressive federal policy.
“We will pursue denaturalization proceedings for those individuals lying or misrepresenting themselves during the naturalization process,” the spokesperson said.
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