The maverick President wants to target mostly dmocrats before 2028 polls
By T N Ashok
NEW YORK: Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DoJ) plans to denaturalize citizens on grounds of fraud in acquiring citizenship, criminal acts or such background and hiding facts in filing papers has led to uncertainties of residency permanency in over 20 million naturalized citizens’, while legal experts say the move is unconstitutional. The Justice Department efforts to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans likely violate constitutional rights – Legal and Constitutional experts say.
The Trump administration wants to take away citizenship from naturalized Americans on a massive scale. While a recent Justice Department memo prioritizes national security cases, it directs the department to “maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence” across 10 broad priority categories.
Denaturalization is different from deportation, which removes noncitizens from the country. With civil denaturalization, the government files a lawsuit to strip people’s U.S. citizenship after they have become citizens, turning them back into noncitizens who can then be deported. The danger is that even a clerical error in spelling of your name in the citizenship filing can be tantamount to fraud in acquiring citizenship.
The government can only do this in specific situations. It must prove someone “illegally procured” citizenship by not meeting the requirements, or that they lied or hid important facts during the citizenship process. The Trump administration’s “maximal enforcement” approach means pursuing any case where evidence might support taking away citizenship, regardless of priority level or strength of evidence.
Legal experts are of the opinion that this move violates the constitution’s 14th amendment under the section due process of law. Cases like that of Baljinder Singh, whose citizenship was revoked based on a name discrepancy that could easily have resulted from a translator’s error rather than intentional fraud, has caused panic among naturalized citizens. There are over 4.2 million Indians in the USA, bulk of whom are naturalized citizens and the rest natural born citizens of the USA who have nothing to fear.
The parents of children born in the U.S.A need to worry if they committed even a clerical error in their names while filing for citizenship. The Department of Justice is stated to be pursuing the denaturalization process rather ruthlessly under President Trump’s orders – raising a spectre because in some cases denaturalization process means you are not entitled to a lawyer, you have to fight the case yourself in courts that can drain your wallet, besides as an ordinary citizen without a lawyers help you could be blindsided by the rules and regulations governing citizenship.
Another fraris there is no jury to decide your case – A sole judge decides your case – That means his sole decision based on right or wrong prosecution can render your stateless in minutes without any recourse to natural justice.
You can be deported even after 20 years or residency if you had made a mistake in your name or spelling of your name or hid the fact that you were caught for traffic violations. As simple as that – you can be denaturalized in minutes with the flourish of a pen and an order from the single judge. But legal experts argue that this is not as simple as it sounds. The DOJ order can be challenged under the due process provision in the constitution under the 14th amendment under which a person either born in the USA or naturalized is stripped of his or her citizenship.
Due process of law means; you have the right to defend yourself through a lawyer or a jury that equates you with other citizens enjoying this privilege as born in the USA citizen. This is called the equal protection law or process that follows as a corollary from the due process law clauses. Equal protection means you enjoy the same rights of citizenship and equal rights to protection as a naturally born in the US American.
For most part of American history, taking away citizenship from a naturalised citizen has been very rare. But it reached a peak dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s during the Red Scare period when a senator led a crusade against communism in the country, which even led Charlie Chaplin to quit the country.
The United States government targeted people it thought were communists or Nazi supporters. Between 1907 and 1967, over 22,000 Americans lost their citizenship this way. A US senator McCarthy was in charge of such a denaturalization process to hunt down communists in the USA and strip them of their citizenship.
Everything changed in 1967 when the Supreme Court decided Afroyim v. Rusk case. The court said the government usually cannot take away citizenship without the person’s consent. It leaves open only cases involving fraud during the citizenship process. After this decision, denaturalization became extremely rare. From 1968 to 2013, fewer than 150 people lost their citizenship, mostly war criminals who had hidden their past.
In criminal lawsuits, defendants get free lawyers if they can’t afford one. They get jury trials. The government must prove guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” – the highest standard of proof. But in most denaturalization cases, the government files a civil suit, where none of these protections exist. No jury, no lawyer, the accused must defend himself for his rights and citizenship. Tall order indeed. If he is poor and cannot afford the legal fees. H has to rely on pro bono lawyers.
People facing denaturalization get no free lawyer, meaning poor defendants often face the government alone. There’s no jury trial – just a judge deciding whether someone deserves to remain American. The burden of proof is lower – “clear and convincing evidence” instead of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Most importantly, there’s no time limit, so the government can go back decades to build cases.
That means it can review citizenship of an individual as far back as the 1960s or 1950s for the denaturalisation process. There are millions of people of ethnic origins who have been granted citizenship in the last 30 to 40 to 50 years—mostly African American immigrants, Asians including Indians, Japanese, Korean Filipino, Arabs, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans.
Some political pundits argue that could be a covert operation to weed out as much as of the democratic voting blocs before the 2028 elections when Trump has threatened to seek a 3rd term, which is not possible under the 22nd amendment of the constitution which limits a presidential term to a maximum of eight years consecutive or nonconsecutive terms.
Only Franklin D Roosevelt is the President who enjoyed four terms before the law came into practice in 1951. He is the longest serving president of the United States who enjoyed the four 4-year terms.
Law professors, who study citizenship, believe this system violates basic constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has called citizenship a fundamental right. Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1958 described it as the “right to have rights.”
In a reading of the law, taking away such a fundamental right through civil procedures that lack basic constitutional protection – no right to counsel for those who can’t afford it, no jury trial, and a lower burden of proof – seems to violate the due process of law required by the Constitution when the government seeks to deprive someone of their rights. The bigger problem is what citizenship-stripping policy does to democracy, political observers said.
When the government can strip citizenship from naturalized Americans for decades-old conduct through civil procedures with minimal due process protection – pursuing cases based on evidence that might not meet criminal standards – it undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide. This creates a system where naturalized citizens face ongoing vulnerability that can last their entire lives, potentially chilling their full participation in American democracy.
The Justice Department memo establishes 10 priority categories for denaturalization cases. They range from national security threats and war crimes to various forms of fraud, financial crimes and, most importantly, any other cases it deems “sufficiently important to pursue.” This “maximal enforcement” approach means pursuing not just clear cases of fraud, but also any case where evidence might support taking away citizenship, no matter how weak or old the evidence is.
This creates fear throughout immigrant communities. About 20 million naturalized Americans now must worry that any mistake in their decades-old immigration paperwork could cost them their citizenship.
This policy effectively creates two different types of American citizens. Native-born Americans never have to worry about losing their citizenship, no matter what they do. But naturalized Americans face ongoing vulnerability that can last their entire lives.
This has already happened. A woman who became a naturalized citizen in 2007 helped her boss with paperwork that was later used in fraud. She cooperated with the FBI investigation, was characterized by prosecutors as only a “minimal participant,” completed her sentence, and still faced losing her citizenship decades later because she didn’t report the crime on her citizenship application – even though she hadn’t been charged at the time.
The Justice Department’s directive to “maximally pursue” cases across 10 broad categories – combined with the first Trump administration’s efforts to review over 700,000 naturalization files – represents an unprecedented expansion of denaturalization efforts.
The policy will almost certainly face legal challenges on constitutional grounds, but the damage may already have been done. When naturalized citizens fear their status could be revoked, it undermines the security and permanence that citizenship is supposed to provide. (IPA Service)
