The Department of Justice is launching an unprecedented campaign to strip U.S. citizenship from hundreds of naturalized individuals, citing a “warp speed” effort to prosecute those who allegedly obtained their status through fraud.
The United States Department of Justice confirmed Thursday that it has launched a historic initiative to revoke the citizenship of naturalized individuals through a massive surge in denaturalization referrals assigned to U.S. attorney offices nationwide. Marking a significant departure from historical precedent where such cases were rare and handled by specialized immigration attorneys, the current administration has already referred 384 cases for litigation in a single year surpassing the total volume of the previous four years combined. Matthew Tragesser, the DOJ’s deputy director for communications, stated, “The Department of Justice is laser-focused on rooting out criminal aliens defrauding the naturalization process.
Under the leadership of President Trump and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department is pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history, thanks to close partnerships” with immigration agencies. He further emphasized the speed of the initiative, adding, “We are moving at warp speed to ensure fraudsters are held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent. Our filed referrals in one year have exceeded the total during the entire four years of the Biden administration, with many more to come.” This aggressive expansion follows a December directive to the Department of Homeland Security to generate up to 200 referrals monthly, signaling a permanent shift toward high-volume enforcement against those accused of obtaining citizenship through fraud or disqualifying criminal activity.