Trump Administration Moves to Revoke Citizenship of 17 Individuals in Denaturalization Push
The effort represents a notable expansion of federal denaturalization activity, raising questions about the legal boundaries of citizenship revocation that courts will likely be asked to define.
The Trump administration has initiated proceedings to revoke the citizenship of 17 individuals accused of fraud and other crimes, according to reporting by CBS News correspondent Camilo Montoya-Galvez published June 2026. The Department of Justice has authority to pursue denaturalization under 8 U.S.C. § 1451, which permits the government to seek revocation of naturalized citizenship obtained through illegal procurement or willful misrepresentation of material facts.
Denaturalization cases are civil proceedings filed in federal district court, meaning the government bears the burden of proving its case by clear and convincing evidence — a standard established by the Supreme Court in Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759 (1988). The 17 individuals named in the current effort are accused of fraud and unspecified other crimes, according to CBS News; the specific charges, the districts in which filings have been made, and the nationalities or countries of origin of the individuals named have not been publicly confirmed in available court records reviewed for this report.
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The Trump administration has previously signaled an intent to expand denaturalization efforts. The Department of Homeland Security announced in early 2025 a renewed focus on naturalization fraud, and the DOJ's denaturalization unit, formally reconstituted during the first Trump administration in 2018, has continued operations into the current term. Historical data from the DOJ shows the government filed approximately 228 denaturalization cases between fiscal years 2017 and 2020, compared to fewer than 25 in the preceding four-year period, according to DOJ records cited in a 2020 report by the Office of Inspector General.
Civil liberties organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have raised concerns in past litigation that expanded denaturalization enforcement could be applied selectively or used as a tool beyond fraud-specific cases, though no court has issued a broad injunction against the program. The administration has not publicly released a full list of the 17 individuals targeted, their case numbers, or the specific statutes under which each case is being filed.
What remains unknown as of publication: the names and case docket numbers of all 17 individuals, the federal districts where filings have been entered, and whether any of the cases involve crimes unrelated to the original naturalization application itself. The relevant public records that would answer these questions are federal district court PACER filings under 8 U.S.C. § 1451 and any DOJ Office of Public Affairs press releases accompanying the filings.