( Spanish) — Denaturalizations or losses of citizenship have been historically rare in the United States. However, starting in 2018, the Donald Trump Government began greater efforts in this direction and, by 2020, a section within the Department of Justice was established specifically dedicated to these cases.
In 2022, Joe Biden’s government published a new denaturalization policywhich “legitimizes the denaturalization apparatus built by the Trump administration,” said in a statement the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC).
The Justice Department filed 228 civil denaturalization cases from 2008 to 2020, according to an official from this US agency. Of those total cases, 41% (or 94) occurred during Trump’s first term.
Therefore, denaturalizations have been part of Trump’s immigration strategy since his first administration.
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Denaturation is the loss of US citizenship by people who had previously obtained it in a naturalization process, according to information of the United States Government.
In denaturalization, these are “persons who are foreign-born and who qualified to obtain U.S. citizenship through naturalization.” […]. It is a process where the government takes action to strip someone of their citizenship,” explained Elizabeth Uribe, immigration attorney at Uribe & Uribe APLC, in an interview with .
Uribe stated that, because these denaturalizations already occurred in Trump’s first term, it is likely that we will see them in his new government.
In Trump’s first term, “there was a great effort by the administration to carry out denaturalizations and we already know, this is no secret, that they are going to make the attempt [una vez más en el segundo mandato]but they will make it more aggressive,” explained the immigration lawyer.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser who is expected be the incoming White House secretary general for policy, said more than a year before the election November that, in a second term of the now president-elect of the United States, they would carry out a “turbocharged” denaturalization project compared to the one that began in the first Trump administration.
“We started a new denaturalization project under the Trump government. In 2025, expect it ‘turbocharged,’” Miller wrote on his X account in response to a user.
Within the framework of this possible next effort, Uribe commented that the incoming Trump administration could reinforce denaturalizations in certain communities, such as Latinos or Muslims, focusing on people with criminal records, who are considered a threat to national security or in those who lied in their process to obtain citizenship.
“We saw it in the first administration: there were many meetings with people who came from communities in Muslim countries or the Latin community,” said Uribe.
–With reporting from ‘s Priscilla Alvarez and Alayna Treene.
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