Denaturalization Is a Powerful Tool To Be Employed Sparingly and Thoughtfully

The New York Times reported on April 23, 2026, that the Department of Justice ("DOJ") has identified 384 naturalized Americans whose citizenship it intends to seek to revoke, a number described as only the "first wave."  To litigate this high number of cases, DOJ is apparently reassigning civil denaturalization cases from the specialists within the DOJ's Office of Immigration Litigation ("OIL") who have historically prosecuted them to civil litigators in 39 U.S. Attorney's Offices across the country.  Further, the Department of Homeland Security is reportedly seeking to refer upward of 200 additional cases a month to DOJ.

These numbers don't just reflect an emphasis or enforcement priority, but an exponential increase and a fundamental change in the way of thinking about denaturalization.  According to the NY Times article, between 1990 and 2017 the federal government filed roughly 305 denaturalization cases — an average of about eleven per year.  Between 2017 and late 2025, approximately 120 additional cases were filed.  Thus, these latest moves by DHS and DOJ would put cases in the current pipeline than the government brought over entire decades.

That dramatic increase without evidence of a flood of improper or fraudulent naturalizations should cause concern regardless of political orientation.  And as one who has worked on these cases, I worry about how these cases will be investigated and litigated.

The High Burden of Proof Reflects the Stakes in Denaturalization Proceedings

A federal court may revoke a naturalized citizen's status only if the government proves, by "clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt," that citizenship was either illegally procured or obtained by willful misrepresentation or concealment of a material fact.  The Supreme Court articulated this standard in Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U.S. 118 (1943), and reaffirmed in Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U.S. 490 (1981).  This is one of the highest evidentiary burdens in federal civil practice and is viewed by most courts as akin to the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard familiar to criminal trials.  This high standard applies because citizenship is not an administrative privilege.  It is, as the Supreme Court has put it, the foundation from which all other rights flow.  Additionally, there are distinct differences in the statutory and analytical frameworks governing civil denaturalization and criminal denaturalization.  See Maslenjak v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 1918 (2017) (overturning conviction in criminal denaturalization case where jury instructions had not required jury to find that lie told was a causal link to the defendant's naturalization).

Meeting the standard in civil denaturalization cases is not easy, nor is it quick.  In the cases I helped litigate during my tenure as a civil Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, the evidence was painstakingly assembled over years, often with the cooperation of foreign governments and international tribunals.  Perhaps most importantly, these investigations and cases were led by a specialist unit within OIL comprised of immigration and national security experts with years of experience and close relationships with the Homeland Security Investigations ("HSI") agents tasked with investigating and building these cases.

The cases I worked on

In United States v. Dzeko, I served as co-counsel with a team of OIL attorneys in the civil denaturalization of Edin Dzeko, a former soldier in an elite unit of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina who participated in the 1993 Trusina massacre where he participated in the execution of unarmed Bosnian Croat civilians and prisoners of war.  Dzeko had been convicted by a Bosnian court of war crimes in 2014 and was serving a thirteen-year sentence when we filed.  He had entered the United States as a refugee, concealed his military service and his role in the killings on his immigration paperwork, and naturalized in 2006.  After compiling a robust evidentiary record explaining to the Court how Dzeko's citizenship had been improperly obtained and explaining why denaturaliztion was appropriate, on August 15, 2018, Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia revoked his citizenship.  See Press Release, U.S. Dep't of Justice, Off. of Pub. Affairs, Justice Department Secures Denaturalization of Convicted War Criminal Who Fraudulently Obtained Refugee Status and U.S. Citizenship (Aug. 22, 2018).  The NY Times article itself alludes to this category of case when it describes that the "people who had committed war crimes overseas" were historically the drivers of the denaturalization docket.

Similarly, I also participated in civil denaturalization proceedings brought against a recently-naturalized citizen who had left the United States to join the Islamic State.  That matter, like Dzeko, involved material misrepresentations about conduct that, had it been disclosed, would have rendered the individual ineligible for the immigration benefits that preceded citizenship.  Those proceedings were hampered by difficulties serving the individual once he transited into ISIS training camps and joined the battlefield.  We attempted to utilize unique methods to serve the individual, including by Facebook messenger, but, reflecting the serious nature of the civil denaturalization proceedings, the District Court was reticent to strip the individual's citizenship without his having a full and fair opportunity to oppose

Those cases took years to build.  They required the painstaking compilation of sufficient documentary proof (including obtaining documents in other countries), gaining witness trust and cooperation, challenging service of process requirements, and careful tailoring to the Supreme Court's unequivocal-evidence standard.  In my opinion, they were exactly the cases Congress had in mind when it authorized civil denaturalization, and exactly the cases that the Department's specialists at OIL could lead, manage, and litigate in cooperation with U.S. Attorney's offices.

What is different now

The Department's current posture does not seem to be an expansion or extension of that work, but a complete change in direction with potentially dramatic consequences.

First, the volume described is a massive increase.  A 384-case "first wave," with an expectation of 200-per-month referrals behind it, is not a targeted enforcement program with an eye towards preserving the precious nature of U.S. citizenship, but feels like a policy-driven quota.  Denaturalization cases cannot be scaled/multiplied quickly because every case is fact-intensive and must be proven with documentary, testimonial, and sometimes forensic evidence that does not leave any issue in doubt.

Second, the personnel involved seems like an abrupt departure with a loss of substantial expertise.  Civil litigators in U.S. Attorney's Offices are capable government lawyers, but many have never handled a complex immigration matter, let alone one requiring a denaturalization analysis and coordination with DHS's special agents to obtain the necessary evidence to prove up the case.  The denaturalization cases I worked were led by the OIL specialists with the U.S. Attorney's Office serving as a sort of local co-counsel.  The numbers mean that the civil AUSAs will likely be taking the lead on these matters.  But civil AUSAs are already stretched by the surge of immigration detention litigation and the flurry of lawsuits brought against the federal government in non-immigration contexts.  Adding on hundreds of complex citizenship-revocation cases is going to further overload already taxed civil AUSAs.  It also diverts substantial resources from their primary mission: to protect the public through zealous defense of lawsuits against the federal government and the recovery of monies owned through affirmative lawsuits against persons and companies who have defrauded the government.

The point

Denaturalization is a powerful tool that Congress wisely provided to safeguard the sanctity of U.S. citizenship.  It makes certain that individuals who have lied to immigration officials to hide disqualifying facts about themselves do not get to keep citizenship they did not rightfully attain.  It is the correct tool when a war criminal lies his way into refugee status, and it is the right tool when a naturalized citizen demonstrates treason and disloyalty to this nation by joining a terrorist group fighting the United States.  If known to immigration officials, this conduct would have barred naturalization in the first place.  In those cases, the evidence justified the remedy, and the specialized resources of the Department were up to the work.

Civil denaturalization is not well-suited to a mass enforcement regime.  It is a narrow, evidence-intensive, carefully cabined civil remedy.  Treating it as a metric that needs to be artificially increased, "the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history," as a DOJ spokesman described it, seems to misapprehend the nature of civil denaturalization.  This is particularly the case where there has been no indication that there is a large class of citizens who were ineligible to be naturalized.

Naturalized Americans should not have to wonder whether their citizenship is contingent on metrics or political decisions.  The statute, the case law, and — until now — the Department's own practices have all said they do not.  Whether that remains true will depend on how the Department and the federal courts manage the weight of 384 cases, with potentially 200 more added per month.