The Trump Administration has placed the forfeiture of nationality among its internal policy priorities. In a note dated June 11, revealed by NPR and Axios, the US Ministry of Justice (DOJ) orders its prosecutors to maximize denaturalization procedures, targeting naturalized Americans suspected of crimes or fraud.
According to the memo, all the denaturalization affairs allowed by law must be continued in a “aggressive” manner. The government favors the civilian way, which allows faster procedures, without a lawyer committed for the accused, and with a lower level of evidence than the penal.
“A two -speed citizenship”
This campaign only concerns Americans not born in the United States, who have therefore acquired American citizenship by different biases other than birth, such as marriage for example. In 2023, they were nearly 25 million in the country (out of some 340 million inhabitants). Several legal experts alert from the creation of a dangerous precedent, and speak of “two -speed citizenship”. The procedure could affect whole families, including children whose citizenship depends on that of a naturalized parent.
The government says it is targeting the cases of “terrorism, war crimes, human rights or fraud at the time of the request for citizenship”. But the memo specifies that any case deemed “important” may be subject to a procedure, which considerably widens the field of prosecution possibilities. Especially since expulsion affairs have multiplied since Donald Trump’s return to power, for sometimes obscure reasons.
Our file on the United States
A tool for political repression
The first public case concerns a former soldier of British origin sentenced to detention of pedocriminal content, naturalized after the facts, and became stateless in June. The administration justifies this policy by the need to protect the United States “from criminals and terrorists”.
However, several lawyers emphasize that massive denaturalization was a tool for political repression during the era of “maccarthyism” until 1967, a period during which Senator McCarthy used this strategy to pursue people suspected of “communism” with little or no evidence. Between 1967 and 2007, only 11 people were denaturalized. In 2025, the shift seems to be accelerating: citizenship becomes reversible, no longer only in case of manifest fraud, but on broad and often blurred criteria.
