Background
The Trump-Vance administration is reportedly accelerating an effort, started during Trump’s first term, to strip Americans of their citizenship. The administration’s denaturalization campaign is one of its many efforts to incite fear in immigrant communities, criminalize free speech and lawful protests, and try to redefine who belongs in America.
One of the president’s first executive orders in January 2025 included a direction to the Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Director of National Intelligence to “ensure the devotion of adequate resources” to identify alleged violations of the naturalization process and act upon the part of U.S. immigration law that allows the government to take away the citizenship of naturalized U.S. citizens under extremely limited circumstances. In June 2025, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Division circulated a memo that directed DOJ attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings.” It established categories of prioritization for denaturalization, including the broad category of “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.” Legal experts fear that this category could be sweepingly applied against Americans speaking or acting in a way that the Trump-Vance administration doesn’t like. In addition to targeting naturalized citizens, the president has openly mused about deporting American-born U.S. citizens abroad.
The first Trump administration set an unmet goal of referring 1,600 cases for civil or criminal prosecution. At the end of 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reportedly directed its field offices to supply the DOJ with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month. If met, this quota would represent a dramatic escalation in the number of denaturalization cases pursued by the government.
A component of Project 2025, the Trump-Vance denaturalization efforts have found allies at far-right legal nonprofit organizations, including the Article III Project and the Center for Immigration Studies, as well as among members of Congress.
What We Sought
Democracy Forward Foundation has sent more than two dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the federal agencies tasked with identifying and prosecuting Americans for alleged naturalization fraud. Our requests include requests for:
- officials’ communications which involve keywords related to denaturalization;
- guidance and policy memoranda detailing how offices working on denaturalization are tasked with operating and prioritizing cases;
- employment records for officials working on denaturalization;
- records created in response to the Executive Order calling for agencies to devote resources to denaturalization; and
- memoranda of agreement between agencies working on denaturalization.
What We Received
We are waiting for a meaningful response to the majority of our FOIA requests from the government.
