Trump wants to prioritize denaturalization. Why California could be a big target

San Francisco Chronicle​

07-07-2025

California is home to 5.6 million of the country's naturalized citizens — a disproportionate share, even accounting for the state's large population.
And in households around the state, conversations have become increasingly anxious since President Trump's Department of Justice announced that its civil division should 'prioritize and maximally pursue' denaturalization, the process of stripping a naturalized citizen of citizenship.
Though the Justice Department said its focus would be criminals — and denaturalization has historically been extremely rare — the announcement rattled even those who were naturalized decades ago and have no criminal background.
Here is what legal experts say about the risks.
Under what circumstances can someone be denaturalized?
A person can be denaturalized if the government finds that person's naturalization was 'illegally procured' — in other words, if the person's citizenship was granted based on an incomplete or falsified application.
Two statutes govern denaturalization proceedings. The first, a criminal statute, says someone who 'knowingly procures or attempts to procure' naturalization illegally can have their citizenship revoked and face up to 25 years in jail.
The second is a civil statute, which says the government can revoke naturalized citizenship if it finds evidence of 'concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation' in the application process.
The government cannot denaturalize someone as punishment for acts committed after that person was naturalized, said Lucas Guttentag, a professor at Stanford Law School. Authorities also cannot use past convictions against someone if that person disclosed them properly when naturalized, he said.
Do naturalized citizens in California have any special protections?
Despite California's extensive efforts to protect immigrant rights, the state does not provide any special shield for individuals facing denaturalization.
California, like all states, cannot pass laws barring the federal government from enforcing the law of the land. Even in California's many sanctuary cities, the most local governments can do is choose not to assist federal law enforcement.
'If (the governments) want to concentrate on denaturalizing Californians, they can do that,' said Bill Ong Hing, an immigration law professor at the University of San Francisco who founded USF's Immigration & Deportation Defense Clinic. 'No lawsuit, no sanctuary policy, is going to stop them if they really want to concentrate on investigating Californians.'
Denaturalization cases are argued in federal court, but it is possible that Californians could benefit from more sympathetic jurors in a criminal case. For civil cases, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, headquartered in San Francisco, has a history of being protective of naturalized citizens, Guttentag said.
But that history is not a surefire precedent.
And California's high number of naturalized citizens — it has just 11% of the country's population but 23% of all naturalized citizens — could make the state a target for the Trump administration, Hing said.
Who is at risk of being denaturalized?
In theory, almost every naturalized citizen could be at risk, said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia and director of the university's immigration, migration and human rights program.
That's because error in the naturalization process could be construed broadly, and the labyrinthine road to naturalization is ripe for missteps. But it's unclear if the government would actually bring a case based on minor omissions or mistakes.
Guttentag said most naturalized citizens shouldn't be alarmed, because of legal precedent and the relatively high burden of proof required to denaturalize.
'There's a big risk of abuse of the denaturalization power here, but the Supreme Court, the courts generally, have been very protective of naturalized citizens,' Guttentag said.
Even under the broadest interpretation of the law, the lengthy judicial process would present a major hurdle to widespread denaturalization.
'Frankly, if you grab almost anyone's immigration file, you could find one at least arguable thing they did that didn't go by the book or didn't include every piece of information,' Frost said. 'The hard part is bringing that to court.'
How many people are usually denaturalized each year?
Fewer than a dozen people a year are typically denaturalized, Frost said.
For the last roughly five decades, Republican and Democratic presidents have used denaturalization sparingly and mainly in extreme cases, like for former Nazis who had committed war crimes, Frost said.
That changed during Trump's first term, said Raquel Aldana, an immigration policy professor at the UC Davis School of Law, who noticed an uptick in denaturalized cases filed. By the end of Trump's first term, his administration filed 102 denaturalization cases, compared with the Biden administration, which filed 24 cases during his term.
What due process exists for people subject to denaturalization proceedings?
It depends on whether the case is criminal or civil. A criminal case, which could result in both denaturalization and in jail time, carries a higher burden of proof. The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the naturalized citizen intentionally acted illegally to procure naturalization. The defendant gets a court-appointed lawyer, and the government must argue its case to a jury.
The bar is lower for a civil case, where the government has to produce 'clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence' that there was an error in the naturalization process. There's no jury, and there's no requirement for the court to appoint a lawyer, so the naturalized citizen has to hire their own lawyer or represent themselves.
'If the government proves its case, the judge has no discretion to deny,' Frost said. 'The judge must grant denaturalization if the government demonstrates it was not legally procured.'
That said, because the courts have recognized the seriousness of losing one's citizenship, the burden of proof for a civil denaturalization case is higher than for non-immigration civil cases, where the standard is a 'preponderance of evidence.'
'In the cases of denaturalization, that's where the biggest highest threshold is, where the government's burden of proof is higher than it is for any other area of immigration law, including deportation,' Aldana said. 'So in theory, the evidentiary proof should be very difficult to establish.'
Can we expect to see denaturalization efforts on the same scale as during the Red Scare era?
The law has changed since the 1940s and 1950s, when the government moved to root out suspected Communist sympathizers via aggressive denaturalization. The Supreme Court in 1967 ruled that the government cannot denaturalize someone on the basis of their conduct or speech, and can only do so if there was an error or fraud in the naturalization process.
But some experts worry that the government could still target people who speak out, just through different legal means.
'They couldn't engage in the overt, 'we-will-punish-you-for-your-speech' approach used in the Red Scare era,' Frost said. 'But they could de facto do the same thing by, for anyone who gives a speech they don't like, looking at their naturalization process to determine whether there's some error, and then denaturalizing them.'
Even the threat of denaturalization could have a chilling effect.
'It's another attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate and frighten people into not opposing it, to acquiescing,' Guttentag said.