US Announces Mass Denaturalization Action

MaTaZ ArIsInG
Dallas, Texas

The Trump administration has launched a sweeping effort to strip 40 naturalized Americans of their U.S. citizenship as part of what U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche called the “largest denaturalization effort in modern history.”

The Justice Department says that they obtained citizenship illegally or fraudulently, related to undeclared crimes including sexual offenses against minors, voluntary manslaughter and fraudulent marriages.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, naturalized U.S. citizenship can be revoked by a federal court if the government establishes that it was illegally obtained or procured through concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.

The Justice Department has made denaturalization a priority under the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration crackdown. Although USCIS can investigate suspected naturalization fraud, the government generally must bring a civil case in federal court to revoke citizenship, where it can argue that citizenship was illegally obtained or secured through concealment or willful misrepresentation of material facts. A federal judge ultimately determines whether the government has met the legal standard for denaturalization.

The Supreme Court has imposed limits on the government’s power to revoke citizenship. In the 2017 case Maslenjak v. United States, the court held that an illegal act during the naturalization process must have played a role in obtaining citizenship, rejecting the government’s argument that any false statement made during the process could be enough to support denaturalization.

File photo: a lectern is seen before a press conference at the Department of Jus…Read More | BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Defendants vary in age from 26 to 76 and came to the U.S. from 20 different countries, including nine from Mexico and four from Pakistan, according to a Justice Department press release.

The cases span a wide range of alleged misconduct, including immigration and identity fraud, fraudulent marriages, concealed deportation orders and criminal histories, as well as cases involving people convicted of espionage, financial crimes, voluntary manslaughter, and offenses involving minors. In many of the complaints, the Justice Department says the individuals concealed conduct or made false statements before or during the naturalization process, making them ineligible for citizenship.

Among those targeted is Jinchao Wei, a Chinese-born former U.S. Navy sailor convicted in 2025 of conspiracy to commit espionage, espionage and unlawfully exporting technical data related to defense articles. The government says Wei began conspiring to sell military secrets to China before becoming a U.S. citizen in May 2022 and concealed that conduct during the naturalization process. He was sentenced to 200 months in prison.

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