DOJ Moves to Strip Citizenship From 40 People: What the Denaturalization Push Really Means

Citizenship is supposed to be the one thing in American law that feels permanent. You raise your right hand, you take the oath, and you walk out of the room an American. For most of the roughly 26 million naturalized citizens living in the United States, that is exactly how it stays.

This week, the Justice Department told 40 of them it wants that oath undone.

On Monday, Oct. 5, the department announced that it had filed denaturalization complaints against 40 people in federal courts from California to Florida. Attorney General Todd Blanche called it “the largest denaturalization effort in modern history.” The Civil Division’s chief, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, put it more bluntly: “Every single one of these individuals lied their way into U.S. citizenship.”

That is a big claim, and it deserves a careful look. So let’s walk through what was filed, what the law actually allows, and why people on both sides of the immigration debate are watching this closely.

What the Justice Department Actually Filed

These are civil cases, not criminal prosecutions. Nobody is being sent to prison by these filings. Instead, the government is asking federal judges to cancel each person’s certificate of naturalization, which would return most of them to the status of a green card holder or, in some cases, leave them open to deportation.

According to the DOJ release, the complaints were filed in 19 federal districts, including the Central and Southern Districts of California, the Eastern District of Virginia, the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida, and the Southern District of Texas. The department also included an important line that often gets lost in the headlines: the claims “are allegations only,” and no court has decided any of them yet.

The legal theories fall into three main buckets:

• Lack of good moral character. Naturalization applicants must show good moral character during a set period before they apply. If someone committed crimes during that window and hid them, the government argues the citizenship was never lawfully earned.
• Concealment or willful misrepresentation. Lying on the application or under oath at the interview about a material fact.
• Unlawful path to a green card. If the green card itself came through a fake marriage, visa fraud or a hidden deportation order, the citizenship built on top of it can fall too.

Who Is on the List

The DOJ release reads less like an immigration document and more like a rap sheet. Here is a sample of what the government alleges, in its own words and filings:

National security. Jinchao Wei, 26, originally from China, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 2021 and naturalized in May 2022 under a military naturalization law. Prosecutors say he had begun conspiring to sell military secrets by February 2022, months before he took the oath. He was convicted in August 2025 and sentenced to 200 months in prison. Ping Li, 61, pleaded guilty in 2024 to acting as an agent of China without notifying the attorney general, and the government says he had been working at the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security since about 2012.

Crimes against children. Several of the 40 are accused of sexually abusing minors before they naturalized and hiding it during the process. In multiple cases, the government says the abuse came to light only after the person had already become a citizen and was later convicted.

Fraud and money. One Florida defendant allegedly underreported at least $12.5 million in income and pleaded guilty to tax evasion. Another allegedly ran fraudulent Medicare claims. A California defendant was later convicted of securities and wire fraud.

Stolen or doubled identities. One Pennsylvania complaint alleges a man used another Afghan national’s identity for about 30 years. A Virginia complaint alleges a man was ordered excluded from the U.S. under one name in 1994, then naturalized in 2008 under a different name without disclosing it.

Marriage and visa fraud. In one Ohio case, DOJ says a man obtained a fake death certificate for his living wife so he could marry a U.S. citizen.

The Man Behind the Announcement

Todd Blanche, who previously served as Deputy Attorney General and before that was a criminal defense lawyer in New York, has made denaturalization a visible priority. In the announcement, he said the defendants “range from an espionage convict to individuals convicted of sexual offenses against minors,” and that the department would keep using the tool to protect national security.

This did not come out of nowhere. In December 2025, the New York Times reported, and Anadolu Agency summarized, that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had instructed field offices to refer 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month to the Justice Department during fiscal year 2026. For context, the same reporting said DOJ filed just over 120 denaturalization cases in total from 2017 through 2025. So the monthly goal alone could exceed eight years of prior filings.

Put those numbers side by side and the story gets more interesting. Forty cases over about six weeks is a lot by historical standards. It is also far below the referral targets USCIS set last year. Whether that is a sign of careful case selection or a slow start toward much bigger numbers is one of the open questions here.

What the Law Actually Says

Federal law, specifically the Immigration and Nationality Act, allows the government to revoke citizenship only if it was “illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.” That is narrower than it sounds. The government cannot strip citizenship because someone committed a crime after becoming a citizen. It has to show the problem existed at the time of naturalization.

The Supreme Court has drawn the lines tightly over the decades:

• In Afroyim v. Rusk (1967), the Court held that Congress cannot simply take away citizenship from someone who has not voluntarily given it up.
• In earlier cases such as Schneiderman v. United States (1943), the Court required the government to prove its case by “clear, unequivocal, and convincing” evidence, a standard far tougher than an ordinary civil suit.
• In Maslenjak v. United States (2017), the Court ruled unanimously that in criminal denaturalization cases, a lie has to have actually mattered to the citizenship decision. A trivial misstatement is not enough.

That is why denaturalization has historically been rare. Each case is decided by a federal judge, and the burden sits squarely on the government. Defendants also do not get a court-appointed lawyer in civil cases the way they would in a criminal trial, which is one of the concerns critics raise.

The Case For the Crackdown

Supporters make a simple argument that is hard to dismiss: citizenship gained through fraud was never legitimately earned in the first place. If someone hid that they were already spying for a foreign government, or that they had abused a child, the oath they took was built on a lie.

USCIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser told the Times last year that the agency’s “war on fraud” is aimed at people who obtained citizenship unlawfully and that it would work with DOJ on cases supported by evidence. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower immigration, argued the U.S. is “nowhere close to denaturalizing too many people.”

There is also an integrity argument. Millions of immigrants waited years, paid fees, learned civics and told the truth on every form. Supporters say enforcing the rules protects the value of what those people earned.

The Case for Caution

Critics do not generally defend spies or child abusers. Their concern is about where this goes next. Sarah Pierce, a former USCIS official, warned that monthly quotas far above recent annual totals could turn a “serious and rare tool into a blunt instrument.” Immigration lawyers and advocates worry that pressure to hit numbers could sweep in people who made honest paperwork mistakes years ago, not deliberate liars.

Another worry is the chilling effect. When citizenship feels conditional, some naturalized Americans may become hesitant to vote, speak publicly or deal with government agencies. That concern has grown alongside other election and immigration fights this year, including the legal battle we covered over a federal noncitizen voting law that a judge struck down.

And there is the due process question. Because these are civil cases, the protections that come with a criminal trial do not automatically apply. Critics argue that for something as serious as losing citizenship, that gap matters.

What Happens Next

Each of the 40 cases now moves through federal court on its own track. Some defendants may settle and agree to give up citizenship, especially those already serving long prison sentences. Others will fight. Judges will weigh whether the government has met that clear and convincing standard.

The bigger story is the pace. If the administration moves toward the referral targets reported last year, federal courts could see hundreds of these cases a year. That would be a historic shift in how the country treats naturalized citizenship, and it will likely produce new appeals that test where the Supreme Court’s lines really sit. It also fits a broader pattern of an aggressive Justice Department under Blanche, which we saw recently when DOJ accused Minnesota judges of misconduct.

Here is the plain-spoken bottom line. Nobody in this debate is arguing that a convicted spy who lied his way into citizenship deserves to keep it. The real debate is about scale, standards and safeguards. Forty cases built on documented crimes are one thing. Thousands of cases driven by monthly targets would be something else entirely. Keep an eye on the numbers in the months ahead, and on how judges respond. With the Supreme Court already handling a heavy docket this term, as we laid out in our guide to the 2026 term, a denaturalization fight could eventually land there too.