Taking away your citizenship

Here it is, right on schedule. We’ve moved onto the next phase of the plan, where the Civil Rights Division, the once proud crown jewel of the Justice Department, will participate in stripping naturalized American citizens of their citizenship.

A June 11 memo, issued by the head of the DOJ’s Civil Division, Brett Shumate, explains the plan. He comes straight out of the chute, explaining in the opening sentences of the memo where the new direction comes from, “President Trump and Attorney General Bondi have directed the Civil Division to use its enforcement authorities to advance the Administration’s policy objectives. This memorandum describes those policy objectives and directs Civil Division attorneys to prioritize investigations and enforcement actions advancing these priorities.”

Denaturalization doesn’t show up until page three of the four page memo, but what comes beforehand is enlightening. It starts off with Trump’s decision to use “our longstanding civil-rights laws…to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” This is Trump’s perverse effort to use our civil rights laws to go after people, businesses, universities, and so on who have fought to make this country more diverse and inclusive. It is the culture wars brought to life in the bureaucratize of a memo titled, “Civil Division Enforcement Priorities.” And for good measure, Shumate adds that Attorney General Bondi wants to “align” the Department’s priorities with Trump’s, before informing his employees that “the Civil Division will use all available resources to pursue affirmative litigation combatting unlawful discriminatory practices in the private sector.”

How does the Civil Division plan to do that? Shumate lists three priorities before he gets to denaturalization, and a quick review of them gives you an idea of the tone of the memo. He starts with something seemingly benign, the use of one of the Civil Division’s longstanding primary authorities, the False Claims Act (FCA). But this is a new twist, because now, instead of targeting fraudsters who steal taxpayer money, the focus will be on people who violate this administration’s efforts to return our culture to one dominated by white cisgender straight males. The FCA makes anyone who knowingly submits false claims to the government liable for three times the amount of damage they cause to the government. It’s an important tool in the arsenal of civil divisions in U.S. Attorney’s offices across the country, with cases often starting as qui tams, where private citizens come forward as whistleblowers in exchange for a share in the damages. Shumate notes that those who can be pursued under the FCA include “entities that receive federal funds but knowingly violate civil rights laws.” Schools, cities, nonprofits—the list of potential targets is endless and treble damages would put a lot of them out of business. This is more of the same, an effort to force people who would oppose the administration into voluntary compliance with its hateful policies, in hopes that they can live to fight another day.

Shumate also nods at other important new policies, like the one using antisemitism as an excuse to interfere with the independence of our nation’s universities and one about protecting women and children, which turns out to be an attack on transgender people. He directs his lawyers that one of their priorities is “ending sanctuary jurisdictions.”

Finally, we get to denaturalization. The memo calls for DOJ to prioritize denaturalization for people who became naturalized citizens through fraud, lying about, or concealing facts related to their eligibility. There is nothing new about this in principle, 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a), provides for citizenship to be revoked in these circumstances.

The law has been around in more or less this form since the early 1950s. But denaturalization has been used judiciously across Republican and Democratic administrations. Denaturalization was used against alleged “communists” during the McCarthy era in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but from 1990 to 2017, DOJ filed only about 11 denaturalization cases per year.

All American citizens, denaturalized or born here, are subject to the penalties of criminal law if they commit crimes. Ripping someone away from their family and their established life has been too harsh for anything other than the most heinous crimes. For instance, Nazis who lied about their role in the Holocaust, were stripped of citizenship if discovered, and deported.

The memo directs the Civil Division to prioritize denaturalization proceedings and sets ten “categories of priorities for denaturalization cases,” including people who commit serious violent crimes like terrorism and war crimes, transnational gang-related crimes, felonies that weren’t disclosed during naturalization, human trafficking, and also white collar crimes, like financial fraud against the U.S. They are all serious crimes that carry lengthy prison sentences in the U.S., and some might argue that’s better than returning them to their home countries, where might receive far more lenient treatment and even be able to return to this country to commit more crimes. But most people would agree that there are at least some cases in these categories where denaturalization might be appropriate.

Then we get to category 10:

“Any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue. These categories are intended to guide the Civil Division in prioritizing which cases to pursue; however, these categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance. Further, the Civil Division retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate. The assignment of denaturalization cases may be made across sections or units based on experience, subject-matter expertise, and the overall needs of the Civil Division.”

I don’t know what that means, and that’s exactly the problem. “Any other cases…that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.” The provision is so vague that it would permit the Division to denaturalize for just about anything. It could be something prior to or following naturalization. Given the other priorities discussed in the memo, it could be exercising First Amendment rights or encouraging diversity in hiring, now recast as fraud against the United States. Troublesome journalists who are naturalized citizens? Students? University professors? Infectious disease doctors who try to reveal the truth about epidemics? Lawyers? All are now vulnerable to the vagaries of an administration that has shown a preference for deporting people without due process and dealing with questions that come up after the fact and with a dismissive tone. “Oopsie,” and there’s nothing we can do to get them back. The way the memo is written, there is no guarantee DOJ will pursue cases against violent criminals—they could just do easy cases to ratchet up numbers like we’re seeing with deportation. Or they could target people who, they view as troublemakers.

Prior to 1933, Jews in Germany were full citizens, protected by the Constitution of 1919. That changed after Hitler came to power. A law passed in 1933 authorized the denaturalization of East European Jews who had become German citizens since World War I and Jews who had already fled from Germany. The laws were vague. Instead of naming Jews, they permitted denaturalization of people who were "undesirable," or were outside of Germany if their "conduct violated the duty of loyalty toward Germany or harmed German interests." The Nazis seized assets from people they denaturalized. Their spouses and children could be included. There was no due process, no judicial or administrative proceedings of any kind available to challenge actions taken against these people. The Library of Congress and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum maintain documentary evidence of what happened.

In 2023, there were approximately 25 million immigrants in this country who had become naturalized American citizens. Today, their lives have become a little less certain. The question we have to learn to ask about this administration is not where it starts, but where it ends.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

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