Episode Details

The Trump administration has identified 384 naturalized American citizens whose citizenship it wants to revoke, and they’re calling it the first wave.

Between 1990 and 2017, the government filed just 305 denaturalization cases total over 27 years, averaging 11 per year, almost exclusively targeting people who committed war crimes abroad before becoming Americans.

Now the Trump administration has ordered DHS to refer 200 denaturalization cases a month to the DOJ. They’ve assigned those cases to prosecutors in 39 regional offices who have never handled denaturalization before, pulling them off healthcare fraud, civil rights enforcement, and procurement cases.

The administration hasn’t explained what led them to target these specific 384 people. What we do know is that Trump specifically named Americans of Somali descent as targets.

UVA law professor Amanda Frost, who has written extensively on the history of denaturalization, says the government has used this power in the past to target people it views as political opponents.

If you were born here, your citizenship cannot be revoked. If you were naturalized, the Trump administration is now telling you it’s conditional.

And if they’re willing to go after naturalized citizens today, the question is who’s next. Political enemies. Activists. People they simply don’t like. They called these 384 people the first wave. Which means they already know there will be a second.