US identifies 384 foreign-born Americans who will soon lose citizenship: Report

The Donald Trump administration is serious about denaturalizing people who got American citizenship by fraudulent means and already identified 384 foreign-born Americans who will lose their citizenship, the New York Times reported. This will a part of a push to increase the pace of denaturalizations which they plan to expand by assigning cases to prosecutors across US attorney’s offices.The NYT report said that senior Justice Department officials in Washington told colleagues during a meeting last week that civil litigators in 39 regional offices would soon be assigned to file denaturalization cases against the individuals. Two people familiar with the plans confirmed the broader effort to ramp up denaturalizations. But it is still not official and it is not known who are these 384 individuals and how they were narrowed down.Matthew Tragesser, a Justice Department spokesman, told NYT that officials were “pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history” from the Department of Homeland Security. “The Department of Justice is laser focused on rooting out criminal aliens defrauding the naturalization process,” he added.

What is denaturalization?

Denaturalization is the legal process of taking away someone’s citizenship after they previously became a citizen through naturalization. Foreign-born people become naturalized citizen after fulfiling specific requirements. Those who are US citizens by birth don’t get naturalized or denaturalized.Under federal law, the government may ask a court to strip the citizenship of people who obtained it fraudulently, by entering into a sham marriage or by withholding information about their past that would have made them ineligible. Some who commit crimes may also be denaturalized. The government must present evidence to a federal judge through a civil or criminal proceeding, making the process challenging and time-consuming and thereby rare.In 2025, it was reported that the administration asked the USCIS to refer 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month to the Justice Department in fiscal 2026.In 2025, the Justice Department pursued 13 denaturalization cases and won eight. During Trump’s first term, the government filed around 100 cases in four years while only 24 such cases were filed under the Biden administration. But now they have new targets which exceed any past precedents.