When can the U.S. government actually revoke citizenship?

Editor’s Note: On Point reached out to the White House, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and requested an interview. USCIS declined our request. The White House, the DOJ, and DHS did not respond.

The U.S. Department of Justice says it’s prioritizing denaturalization, or stripping foreign-born Americans of their citizenship. How would that process work and what’s at stake?

Guests

Ahilan Arulanantham, professor at University of California Los Angeles Law School. Faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA.

Irina Manta, law professor at Hofstra University.

Also Featured

Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation.

Transcript

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: The United States has more than 24 million naturalized citizens. These are people who were born in other countries, but have made America their home. 24 million naturalized citizens is basically one out of every 13 people in the United States. Now, the Trump administration says it is prioritizing denaturalization.

Also known as stripping some of those people of their citizenship.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, we have criminals that came into our country and they were naturalized, maybe through Biden or somebody that didn’t know what they were doing. If I have the power to do it, I’m not sure that I do, but if I do, I would denaturalize, absolutely.

CHAKRABARTI: President Trump speaking to reporters on Air Force one Late last month. And back in June, the U.S. Justice Department released a memo citing denaturalization as a top law enforcement priority. So when and how can the United States government actually revoke citizenship? And does Trump’s claim about the danger posed by naturalized Americans really hold up?

Joining us now is Ahilan Arulanantham. He’s a professor at the University of California Los Angeles Law School and Faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA. Professor, welcome to On Point.

AHILAN ARULANANTHAM: Thank you for having me, Meghna.

CHAKRABARTI: I do apologize for screwing up your last name, with a name like Chakrabarti you think I would’ve gotten it right, but I want to get this right.

ARULANANTHAM: No worries.

CHAKRABARTI: Arulanantham.

ARULANANTHAM: Arulanantham.

CHAKRABARTI: (LAUGHS) Arulanantham. Am I dragging you back to your childhood where people ask you where you’re from?

ARULANANTHAM: I’m like Chakrabarti, Chakrabarti.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Fair enough. Alright, so let’s get down to actually this quite serious matter of the government amping up its efforts at denaturalization.

Let’s get straight to the president’s question that he said. I don’t know if I have the power as president to denaturalize. Does he or does he not?

ARULANANTHAM: The power to denaturalize does exist in our law, but it’s very limited. A person who makes a false statement during the naturalization process, and that false statement is critical to whether or not they would’ve actually been able to naturalize can be denaturalized.

So for example, if someone says on the application that they have been a green card holder for five years, but in fact they were only a green card holder for one year, then the government can go back and denaturalize that person. But I think there’s two important points to recognize about the limit of that power.

One is it’s wrong to suggest that just ordinary criminal convictions can be the basis for denaturalization. Because they’re not, somebody who’s been a naturalized citizen and then is convicted of a crime, they go to prison just like other citizens. But the fact that you’ve been convicted of a crime by itself does not render you eligible for denaturalization.

And in that way, it’s very different from deportation for non-citizens. Many crimes can result in people losing their immigration status, including even their green cards. But that’s not the case for people who have naturalized. And then the second thing, which is important to recognize, is denaturalization happen[s] in federal court.

Not an immigration court. And the government can’t fire the federal judges if they don’t like what they’re doing, as they’re doing with immigration judges right now. Unfortunately. And so that means that most of the protections available in criminal cases are available in denaturalization cases.

Not all of them. There’s probably not a right to appointed counsel. Depending on how the government charges a denaturalization, but almost everything else, including the very high burden of proof and the fact that all the process that’s normally afforded in federal court is afforded to people in denaturalization proceedings.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so let’s just clarify a couple things here. First and foremost, it is quite straightforward, as far as I read it, that if you commit fraud during your citizenship process, and that’s discovered later by the federal government, that is a basis for denaturalization. Yes?

ARULANANTHAM: If the fraud would’ve rendered you ineligible.

CHAKRABARTI: For citizenship?

ARULANANTHAM: For citizenship, yeah. So most of the time, that’s often going to be true, but occasionally it’s not. If you lied about for some other reason, like to protect your husband, which is what the last Supreme Court case was about on the subject, then not. But yes, many of the frauds that you might expect would arise in this kind of situation.

Lying about something that mattered to whether or not you get your citizenship, that can be a basis, yes.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Does that extend to lying about whether or not you have a criminal record?

ARULANANTHAM: Only if the crime would’ve rendered you ineligible to naturalize. And not every crime does that. Some crimes don’t.

It depends.

CHAKRABARTI: And then so similarly about the specificity of a committed crime. If after you become a U.S. citizen and you do commit a crime, you said for ordinary crimes, denaturalization is not an option for the federal government. But that still leaves extraordinary crimes that you could possibly lose your citizenship.

ARULANANTHAM: Yeah. Extremely narrow ground for crimes, it is a charged as a federal crime, actually. I’m trying to remember the number. It might be 1451, I can’t remember, but it’s a federal crime, which is the crime of having obtained naturalization by fraud. That’s the thing that I’m thinking of.

Lots of other crimes, if we’re talking about post-naturalization conduct. Like after you become a citizen, you then engage in whatever, drug trafficking, fraud, terrorism, whatever it may be. Those are not going to be a basis for denaturalization. The government would have to show that there was actually something you said in your naturalization application from before, before the criminal activity occurred.

That was a false statement, and that would’ve rendered you ineligible in order to then try and connect the two things up and take away your citizenship.

And as a practical matter, that doesn’t happen. You don’t see cases, naturalization cases that happen on that basis.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So again, I think this process is so little understood in part because how often does it actually happen?

ARULANANTHAM: The number of cases are really rare. In the first Trump administration it was something like 25 cases a year that I think actually were charged. Which is not even a drop in the bucket when you think about all of the federal criminal cases happening, let alone all the deportation cases happening.

And that itself was a very big increase from prior years. Roughly double. I think before that It’d been like 10, 15 cases a year. So it’s very rare. A lot of the small number of cases that have existed have focused on war criminals, famously Nazis who had lied about whether or not they were part of the Nazis when they came to the U.S.

And for example, like I said, the last Supreme Court case about this was about a Bosnian Serb who her husband had been involved in a war crime in Bosnia. So it’s things like that, that the government has gone after people for, a very small number.

CHAKRABARTI: So is it fair to say that, what, less than 50 a year?

ARULANANTHAM: Yes. The last data I’m aware of is that it’s well below that, it’s like around 25 cases a year.

CHAKRABARTI: Out of the 24 million naturalized citizens in the United States.

ARULANANTHAM: Yeah. Very small number.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay.

ARULANANTHAM: Of course, that —

CHAKRABARTI: No, go ahead.

ARULANANTHAM: Sorry. Just say one other thing about that. It doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be an attempt to vastly increase this number of cases. And of course you can have a huge amount of harassment and abuse of people if you bring criminal charges or civil denaturalization charges against them, even if they don’t have a lot of merit and don’t ultimately result in someone losing their citizenship. The government can do a tremendous amount of damage to people by bringing cases that are extremely weak.

So I don’t want to say that this isn’t something that couldn’t arise in the future, but the legal basis to do it would be very flimsy, I think, to do large scale denaturalization attempts.

CHAKRABARTI: Yes. In fact, that’s exactly why we’re doing this show, right? Because the Trump administration has made a lot of very clear noises or statements about wanting to expand the number of people it seeks to denaturalize in this country.

And we’ll talk about what, by what legal basis or policy basis they could do that. But I’d like to actually for a second if I could talk about what specifically in this June 11th memo from the Department of Justice that I referenced earlier, that said they’re going to put denaturalization as a top law enforcement priority.

And let me just read a little bit from the beginning of this memo. And the memo was put out by Brett Shumate. He’s the Assistant Attorney General of the United States. And in section one, it says, it references an executive order put out by President Trump called “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”

Which establishes, quote: “The policy of the United States to protect the civil rights of all Americans and … promote individual initiative excellence and hard work.”

And then the memo goes on and says: “To this end, the president ordered all agencies to enforce our longstanding civil rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities. As part of these efforts, attorney General Bondi has directed that the Justice Department align its litigating positions with the requirement of equal dignity and respect.”

That’s an interesting way to start a memo that has to do with seeking to denaturalize more foreign-born Americans.

ARULANANTHAM: Yeah. I don’t know where to start with that one. I mean there’s so many ways in which this administration has turned the kind of politics and policy of anti-discrimination on its head.

The president decries racism, but then repeats conspiracies about, racist conspiracies against immigrants, ends the refugee program except for white South Africans, rants against Somalis and repeats lies about Haitians eating cats and dog dogs.

I could go on and on. And unfortunately, it’s not just in the statements, but it does also play out in very real ways. In policy, in the statements of the administration. So that opening to me just sounds like that, it sounds similar to many other statements that the administration has made in the context of immigration policy, civil rights enforcement, affirmative action, anti-Semitism, all of those things.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Let’s hear now from a voice who supports the Trump administration’s efforts. Laura Ries. She believes that the Trump administration focus on revoking citizenship from foreign born Americans is the right idea.

Ries is director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation.

LAURA RIES: Naturalization, U.S. citizenship is the most important immigration benefit that we can confer on someone coming to the U.S. and choosing to stay here. And so we want to make sure that they are truly worthy of receiving that tremendous benefit and that they not benefit from ill-gotten gains.

CHAKRABARTI: Now, of course, the Heritage Foundation is the primary architect behind Project 2025, which specifically mentions denaturalization in its own document. Pages 143 and 144, specifically, if you want to take a look. Project 2025 advocates for, quote: “Re-implementation of the USCIS Denaturalization Unit. An effort to maintain integrity in the system by identifying and prosecuting criminal and civil denaturalization cases in combination with the Department of Justice for aliens who obtain citizenship through fraud and other illicit means.” End quote.

Now, the Heritage Foundation’s Laura Ries says she agrees with many of the categories Trump’s Justice Department says it is prioritizing like people who have engaged in torture, war crimes or human rights violations.

 RIES: During Biden’s four years, when we experienced the highest numbers ever of people coming to the U.S., it showed us that people from all over the world want to come to the U.S. in very large numbers.

That means we can be, and we should be very choosy about who we say can come here and can stay here. Let alone who we’re going to give U.S. citizenship to. If you are harming other people, harming Americans, lying about those activities, then no, you should not be given U.S. citizenship. And if you were given it, then that should be taken away.

CHAKRABARTI: Ries says, revoking citizenship for people, or excuse me, revoking citizenship from people could also, in her view, help protect against future immigration fraud.

RIES: Immigration fraud writ large, not just citizenship, is a problem. Because it is for so long, been low risk and high reward. The likelihood that you’re caught or punished for it is extremely low, and the benefit of staying here is extremely high.

And that’s just a recipe for fraud, and so people do exploit it, including citizenship. If you want to change behavior, change future behavior for other applicants, then you want to send the message that if you commit fraud to get an immigration benefit, you’re not going to continue to benefit from that.

CHAKRABARTI: We asked Reese whether she worries that the Justice Department memo could be a slippery slope to the administration simply targeting people it does not like or agree with, and possibly revoking their citizenship.

RIES: No. I’m not worried about it. I think there’s enough work to be done in the categories higher up the list, whether that is gang membership, terrorism, supporting terrorism, war crimes, et cetera, et cetera, fraud.

These cases are not easy and they’re not quick. So I’m not concerned about it being done for any old reason.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s Laura Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation. Now, of course, the Heritage Foundation is in the news quite a lot because of Project 2025 and how closely the Trump administration seems to be following a lot of the project’s wishes or designs.

There’s another note here we should mention about Heritage. In October, the organization’s president Kevin Roberts defended Tucker Carlson’s decision to interview white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Here’s part of the video that Roberts posted on X, where he called Tucker Carlson a close friend.

KEVIN ROBERTS: The venomous coalition attacking him or sowing division, their attempt to cancel him will fail. I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says. But canceling him is not the answer either. Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.

CHAKRABARTI: Roberts faced considerable blowback for that statement, including from conservatives and from folks within the Heritage Foundation. He then said the script for his video had been written by a staffer who was reportedly reassigned and has since left the Heritage Foundation. The day after the video posted, Roberts wrote on X: “The Heritage Foundation and I denounce … and stand against Nick Fuentes’ vicious anti-Semitic ideology, his Holocaust denial and his relentless conspiracy theories that echo the darkest chapters of history.” End quote. He then posted another video in early November, and here’s a part of that.

ROBERTS: My use of the phrase venomous coalition was a terrible choice of words. It caused justified concern, especially among friends and allies who know how seriously Heritage has fought and continues to fight against the rise of antisemitism. Everyone has the responsibility to speak up against the scourge of antisemitism, no matter the messenger. Heritage and I will do so, even when my friend Tucker Carlson needs challenging.

CHAKRABARTI: At least six Heritage Foundation staffers have reportedly resigned after Roberts’ comments. And so there, with that background, we went back to Laura Ries and asked her whether she agreed with Robert’s initial defense of Tucker Carlson’s interview of White nationalist Nick Fuentes and whether she agrees with Fuentes’ views.

She declined to comment on either question.

Okay, so Professor Arulanantham. Let me ask you this. You heard Laura Ries there, first of all, state something which I think a lot of Americans agree with, that it’s quite a privilege to become a naturalized citizen, and so therefore, should there actually be, in a sense, a higher standard for those citizens when they are discovered as having committed fraud or a crime post or even pre or post their naturalization.

What do you think about that?

ARULANANTHAM: I agree that it’s a priceless a gift or blessing to be a U.S. citizen. It affords you the ability to travel all over the world and tells you to the protection of this government. And of course, allows you to stay here. So absolutely, I agree with that.

I have no problem in principle with the concept, not just even in principle, in practice with the concept, the people who got naturalization through fraud can be prosecuted for that. And if that’s why they got it, so they were actually not eligible for it, then it should be taken away. But I think that’s about the last place where I think I agreed with the statements from Laura Ries.

One thing, which I think is really important where we disagree, is I really do believe that if you want to change that rule and make it so that people who just commit crimes can be denaturalized as a result of that, then you really undermine the value that citizenship has, because it creates certain very basic guarantees that are available to everyone.

And now this would change and you’d have two classes of citizens. Those who are born here and those who are not. Of course, everybody, citizen or not, is subject to the criminal law. And if you commit a terrible crime, you should go to prison for a long time. But that doesn’t mean that you lose your citizenship, and it shouldn’t turn on something as accidental on where you were born, in my view.

That such that consequence would flow to one side of those people and not the other. The other thing where I think we really disagree is on the threat about selective enforcement and the idea that the administration would use the denaturalization power, if it were greatly expanded, to go after its enemies, to go after people from disfavored racial groups.

Sadly we have seen this administration do exactly that and it’s used, excuse me, it’s used the deportation power to do that, to go after people whose political views they didn’t like when it came to Palestine. And actually, other political issues. To go after people who are engaged in advocating for the rights of immigrants. And of course, we’ve seen so much race discrimination from this administration just all across the board. So it’s easy to imagine that this power would be used in the same kinds of ways, and that could lead to a lot more abuse as well.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. I wanna talk about now about how the Trump administration is seeking to expand the number of denaturalization cases it may pursue. Professor, hang on here for a second because to do that I wanna bring in Irina Manta. She’s a law professor at Hofstra University. Professor Manta, welcome.

IRINA MANTA: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: I’m having unfortunately tough time with names today. I should say Professor Manta, forgive me.

MANTA: No worries.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, let’s talk in more detail about what the Justice Department memo says about how and when they might seek denaturalization cases in federal court.

If both of you can just bear with me for a moment, I want to read through the list or an abridged list of the 10 types of crimes or instances where denaturalization would be pursued. The first is the one we’ve already talked about, individuals who pose a danger to national security, being parts of terrorist organizations, committing espionage against the United States, et cetera.

Then there’s number two, cases against individuals who engage in torture war crimes. Also, still a longstanding area where you could get denaturalized. Then there’s cases against individuals who further or furthered unlawful enterprise of criminal gangs or transnational criminal organizations or drug cartels.

Then another, number four is individuals who commit felonies that were not disclosed during the naturalization process, then there’s individuals who committed human trafficking, sex offenses, or violent crimes. Then there’s cases against individuals who engaged in forms of fraud against the United States, including the paycheck protection program or loan fraud.

Then cases against individuals who engaged in fraud against private individuals, funds or corporations. You could also be denaturalized if you acquired your naturalization through government corruption or fraud. There are cases that could be referred by a U.S. attorney’s office in connection with pending criminal charges, but don’t fit in the other categories I just read.

And then finally, number 10, the Justice Department could pursue denaturalization in cases referred to the civil division that the division determines sufficient and important to pursue. How much broader is that suite of 10 points? How much broader is that than what we have now in terms of when the federal government would try to denaturalize a U.S. citizen?

Professor Manta. Yeah, go ahead.

MANTA: I would say that one of the things that’s very concerning about this list that’s on the fourth page of that memo is that it’s basically saying we’re going to do things that are available under the current law, but then when it lists them, and here, I want to echo what Ahilan was saying earlier.

It doesn’t actually explain, I think that’s intentional, what the timing is of those offenses. Are we talking about things that happened before the person was naturalized? In which case, why do we have so many categories? Why isn’t it just things that were not disclosed? Because presumably, if they were disclosed, it doesn’t really make sense, like because the person wouldn’t have gotten naturalized if it’s one of these, let’s say terrorism and all these different things.

And so I think here we have to go back to this idea that the administration at times is talking in a coded manner, like what you were talking about with the DEI term, that’s a form of dog whistle in my view. And here this ambiguity is also, actually, I think trying to hint at the fact that they are going to expand things, that they are going to go beyond what statutory law would allow, and beyond what other administrations have done previously, and that it’s going to try to go after everything and everyone in every possible way, including as Ahilan was pointing out, in ways that are harassing.

So I find the ambiguity and among other things of this memo very disconcerting. I don’t trust it at all. Also, if we look at how other immigration matters have been handled this year by the federal government, including in unlawful ways, I’m very concerned.

CHAKRABARTI: In fact, from Ms. Ries at the Heritage Foundation a couple of minutes ago. We heard that one of the goals here is to make people think twice, right? About becoming naturalized citizens. And she was saying like that would effectively, the chilling effect would potentially reduce the number of people who they believe are dangerous to the United States from trying to become citizens. Professor Manta.

MANTA: Yes, I am getting that sense now. The memo, I’m afraid, goes even further than that. He’s talking about things that are happening after naturalization. But absolutely there are any number of chilling effects that are in place here. One of them is the one that you mentioned, of just discouraging people from becoming citizens in the first place.

But another one is to basically get people to not express opinions that might not be pleasant to the current administration. People are afraid of ending up on the government’s radar right now, even if they did nothing wrong. Even if they did nothing illegal, there was nothing wrong with the way that they went about immigrating and naturalizing.

But they don’t want to end up in the cross hairs or have to go through some massive legal process. And if it’s done on a civil basis, they might have to pay for their own lawyer. And so this is all could get very unpleasant. And so many people right now who are immigrants feel like, you know what?

I just better stay quiet, not get involved, not lead a political life. And that is not good for the United States.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Okay. Professor Arulanantham, let me just get some more clarity here. Because when we are speaking about the law, it can get somewhat opaque and definitely confusing. But now that we have that list of the 10 points or 10 areas in which the DOJ might want to seek denaturalization, just to check. If a U.S. citizen who is born in this country commits fraud against a private individual.

Or let’s say engaged, allegedly engaged in fraud against the paycheck protection program or allegedly helped out a drug cartel. If a domestically born U.S. citizen committed any of those things, could they lose their citizenship?

ARULANANTHAM: No. No. Plain and simple, no.

CHAKRABARTI: And so that’s the difference here. A difference, but go ahead.

ARULANANTHAM: I think and I’m sorry that lawyers are always trying to, being opaque but if a person is naturalized and after they’re naturalized, they commit one of those same offenses that you’re talking about, they cannot be stripped of their citizenship either.

And then that’s why I think this memo is really trying to scare people by being ambiguous about that question. Now, if you commit a crime like that before you apply for citizenship, but it somehow doesn’t come up in the interview or in your application and you fail to write that question, write that you were convicted on that basis, but you get naturalized anyway.

That mistake, that could be the basis, being denaturalized, but that mistake doesn’t happen, right? Or must be extraordinary.

CHAKRABARTI: But what you’re saying is that record the memo makes is quite fuzzy about whether they’re talking about before or after someone becomes a U.S. citizen. So we’re going to pick up on that thought when we come back.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Manta. Let me just ask you something about the limits of executive power in this case, because we talked, we’ve talked about multiple times. No, the president can’t do this. President can’t denaturalize more people just willy-nilly, or the expanded basis of denaturalization as determined by the Justice Department, not really practicable in an actual federal court, but I do wonder about that. Because aren’t we talking about policies that are within the power of the executive to expand? As far as I know, the basis for denaturalization, beyond the you committed treason stuff.

It’s not necessarily in the Constitution. I think that the Justice Department could in fact pursue more of these cases. Is that correct or no?

MANTA: The Department of Justice technically can do all sorts of things. Whether those things are legal and ethical is a different question. And same with whether the president directs them to do things that may or may not be legal and ethical.

So it’s a matter of whether it’s legitimate or not for them to do, and I don’t think it is, and I think the courts will hopefully largely stop them. Now, who knows? They might also select carefully where they file their cases, which is another problem, right? If they look for specific judges that might have friendlier views toward this.

And you can game this a little bit more in some courts than others, what judge you get. But so it’s not supposed to. Now, look we have precedents in history for when governments in the early 20th century used the power of denaturalization to basically go after certain, like, ethnic groups or go after people whose views it didn’t agree with.

But then, the Supreme Court did push back ultimately against that. And then starting in the late ’60s, this really slowed down. And it became much more just about, okay, was there fraud in the denaturalization process? And so part of that was the realization that the United States should not be like other countries that are totalitarian in nature.

And Soviet Union, et cetera, at the time, and that are more long, papers place type countries. And it’s very frightening to see us now come back to that and basically unwind some of these things that have been recognized as no longer being acceptable.

So in that sense, it’s a return to older history, except there is no legal precedent that should, to some extent, stand in the way of doing so.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Arulanantham, would you like to add to that?

ARULANANTHAM: Yeah, I agree with what Professor Manta says. I think I would just add that currently the basis for denaturalization are written in federal laws that Congress has enacted. And the Supreme Court has construed those laws narrowly as we’ve both been saying pretty recently. The case I mentioned at the top of the show about the Bosnian Serb women who was not, she won in the Supreme Court. That was from 2017. And the prior case interpreting similar rules saying that you have to, the fraud has to be material. That is, it has to be something that would’ve caused you to lose, to not be eligible for naturalization. That was written by Justice Scalia.

So it could change. The Supreme Court has done all kinds of radical shifts in its doctrine in the recent past to conform to what the Trump administration wants to do. But this would be a very radical shift, and it would have to happen very fast in order for the legal system to accommodate some kind of mass denaturalization.

CHAKRABARTI: I’m thinking back to the fact that there have been so few cases in the past for a successful prosecution for denaturalization. And I wonder what happens to those people who are stripped of their citizenship? Where do they go if they’re not dual citizens?  

ARULANANTHAM: In the cases that I’m aware of, the government then seeks to deport the person.

And I’m aware of a handful of cases that came after, in the years after 9/11 when there were prosecuting in the sort of terrorism related context. And the ones I know about, people were sent back to countries that they had come from, many years ago, before they became U.S. citizens.

And those were criminal cases where the denaturalization was part of the criminal process because the person made a statement, like we talked about, had made a statement that was fraudulent and that would’ve rendered them ineligible for naturalization. So that’s the ones that I’m aware of.

CHAKRABARTI: I don’t know if Professor Manta, other information about what happens in those cases, but for me, from what I’m aware of, it leads to deportation.

MANTA: And some of them, the first step that happens is that people revert back to their previous status, which is normally a green card.

And so there still needs to be a process to actually do that deportation. And indeed, and in some cases, that’s what happened. They just get sent back to usually wherever they came from originally. But some of them also stay here either because the government doesn’t bother going after them or because they do it in such a way that fails.

For example, in the case of Baljinder Singh there was a drug offense committed during the time period that Singh was a citizen and before he was denaturalized, and the court there said, look, you can’t deport him on the basis of that crime because he was not an alien at the time of that crime.

So this is just one example to show that it can actually get tricky to deport someone. Even once there has been an offense, you need another process. And that process may or may not work depending on whether you follow the statutory requirements accordingly. But I want to emphasize one point, which is that even though we’re talking about a relatively small number of cases, this is really intended to scare people. And even a small number of cases can do that. And a couple of loud memos that say we’re going to go after this whole laundry list of things. Again, some of these concepts being vaguer than others. And I think we can’t get hung up on the fact that the number is small, even if the number, let’s say, remains small next year, this is having an effect.

And if you speak with immigrants to the United States, you will see that they are changing the way that they live their lives and they express themselves out of fear.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Can, let’s talk for another minute about the Singh case that you just brought up Professor Manta, because you said that before he was stripped of his denaturalization, he couldn’t, obviously could not be, excuse me. Before he was stripped of his citizenship, he could not be deported, but he ended up getting denaturalized. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because I understand that this was also part of a first Trump administration effort called Operation Janus.

MANTA: Yeah, this was the first big Operation Janus case, so where the Trump administration digitized a bunch of records and to go after people that may have used the different names at different stages.

Singh’s case is very, it’s very strange in a sense, and very messy in a sense that there were two applications that he filed originally. To remain in the United States under two different names, but it’s not obvious why. Because it’s not like the first one was denied. It’s just that something happened there procedurally where he may have not shown up at a hearing and so he files it again.

Ultimately Singh ends up getting citizenship in the United States, and he ends up getting denaturalized, as you said, because of this Operation Janus activity. And then after that, right after all that, it turns out that at some point he engaged in, it was like conspiracy to distribute MDMA and some other drugs, but during the period that he was a citizen.

And so Court of Appeals said in 2021, which is the last official record that I’m personally aware of. Alright, you can’t do that. Like you can’t get rid of him on that basis. And so the government probably thought that would be the easiest and then turned out to be wrong. And then, after that, like who knows what happened, whether they just give up or whether they’re still at it. But this case was just one of these cases that stuck out because you had the denaturalization that was originally done in absentia. And there are a number of procedural problems with civil denaturalization as opposed to criminal denaturalization.

CHAKRABARTI: … Yeah, I do wanna, actually, that’s really very important. And I want to follow up on that, but I need to correct myself. Because I made an error in saying that Operation Janus was started in the first Trump administration. That is incorrect. I now have the proper date in front of me.

It was started in 2010, which would’ve been the Obama administration. And then it was launched, quote, to continue the work and expand the Department of Homeland Security efforts to identify individuals with a final deportation order who naturalized or obtained legal permanent resident status under a different identity. So it dates back 15 years now. But Professor Manta, I was going to ask both of you, and I’ll just stick with you for a second. The difference between criminal denaturalization cases and civil ones, because the Department of Justice memo from this summer, I believe it focuses on civil denaturalization.

So talk about that.

MANTA: Yeah. So this is a very important distinction. Criminal denaturalization, while it sounds scarier, and in some sense, it is. Because you could also end up with actual criminal sanctions on top of being denaturalized, is something that is limited to the 10 years after you obtained naturalization.

So that’s the statute of limitations. The government can only go after you during that time. And it also being a criminal proceeding comes with certain kinds of rights like a right to having a lawyer provided to you to a jury and so on, where civil denaturalization, and this is really one of the issues we’re dealing with here.

It is endless. The government could show up dozens of years after somebody has become a citizen and say that person committed some kind of offense during their naturalization process. And we’ve decided we’re going to go after them only now. And as my co-author, Cassandra Robertson and I have written about, there is a very strong interest in finality in the legal system generally, but specifically when it comes to naturalization.

Is there a point where we can say, you are now a citizen. You are now basically like everybody else. We don’t have two classes of citizenship or not. And so you combine this door that was technically left open by maintaining this civil denaturalization process. With an administration that is potentially actively going after people that it doesn’t like for ideological or racial or other reasons, and that becomes extremely dangerous and really divides America.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Arulanantham, do you want to add to that?

ARULANANTHAM: Only that I think you could imagine a court that looked at that set of rules and said, we obviously should have a right to appointed counsel given how significant a deprivation it would be to take somebody’s citizenship away. And similarly, a court that said it’s not fair.

30, 40 years after the fact, it should be settled. There should be a statute of limitations in civil denaturalization proceedings. Unfortunately, I don’t think this court is the one that you’d expect to make a ruling like that, but if we want a system of fair, orderly justice, I think those would be basic requirements that ought to be imposed.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor, you still there?

MANTA: Which one of us? (LAUGHS)

CHAKRABARTI: I’ve got multiple to choose from. I was trying to see if Ahilan is still there, but it looks like —

ARULANANTHAM: Yes, that’s, I just wanted say, yeah, I think those are rules that ought to be in place.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Let me ask you both about one more thing, and that’s the final the point number 10 in the DOJ memo, because it’s the one that seems the broadest, that basically it’s like we may pursue denaturalization against you at your 30, 40 years, even after you become a citizen.

If we just perceive you as being a threat or a potential danger to national security, I’m not sure how much broader you can be in terms of who could be targeted for denaturalization. And Ahilan, I’ll just stick with you for a second and give Irina the last word there.

So it seems as if then, this could be a threat to people forever and essentially if indeed be the administration behaves this way, we will have a sort of two tier citizenship.

ARULANANTHAM: Yeah, I definitely think that’s what the government intends in making this, in writing this.

But I think it’s really important to be appropriately concerned, but also not to be overly concerned. And that’s true of so many things in the Trump administration. And I think here the critical point is, this is a memo that is describing who they want to prioritize for denaturalization, like who do they wanna investigate? Who do they want to try to get at? But of course, the person still has to be subject to it. Like the law still has to require that they’re not actually entitled to citizenship. If they go through every case of every person with a crime or maybe only certain nationalities, people with a crime, they can look and look.

But what they’re gonna find if they go through thousands of those cases, is that only a vanishingly small number of them are actually subject to denaturalization. And so I think it’s, like I said, it’s important to be worried. I think a memo that creates prioritization like that to the threat of selective enforcement and targeting people for their political views is wrong, and that should be denounced.

But I don’t think it’s going to lead to thousands and thousands of denaturalizations. Because they can look all they want. They can look and look, but they’re not gonna find very many people who are actually, the law would allow them to lose their citizenship.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.