The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in June that it would be looking for to revoke the citizenship of a Nevada resident who utilized for citizenship under a false id and failed to disclose that she beforehand utilized for immigration advantages in her 2010 naturalization utility.
The case marks the first denaturalization effort in Nevada in over twenty years, according to the nonpartisan knowledge group Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC.) It’s half of a wider push from President Donald Trump to develop denaturalization efforts — a not often seen tactic meant to strip the citizenship of people who lied on their purposes or have critical prison histories. Since the begin of Trump’s time period, a report 123 denaturalization complaints have been filed across every state.
This summer time, the Trump administration’s efforts started to play out in Nevada, which has one of the largest foreign-born populations per capita. In September, Nevada First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah despatched out a press release that her workplace was looking for to revoke the citizenship of another naturalized Nevada resident who failed to disclose his historical past of sexual assault when he utilized for citizenship in 2018.
Alongside that release, Chattah posted on X that her workplace “will aggressively investigate and prosecute those who use deceit to obtain these sacred rights.”
So far, the two instances filed in Nevada line up with the Trump administration’s claim that it seeks to goal violent criminals, gang members and people who lied on their citizenship purposes. Still, some legal students and advocates are involved about the potential for abuse and that the push comes with a “political flavor.”
Those issues are heightened under Chattah, who as Nevada’s U.S. attorney has discretion to provoke denaturalization proceedings. During her tenure as Nevada’s prime prosecutor, she has labored to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown — launching a probe to show that noncitizens were extensively voting in state elections and invoking a not often used 18th century wartime law to justify fast deportations.
Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Migration Policy Institute, said that denaturalization is an “extremely integral” half of Trump’s immigration agenda and has become more and more politicized under his administration.
Key to this is that in 2025 the DOJ gave much wider discretion to U.S. attorneys on whether to pursue denaturalization instances. A June 2025 DOJ memo advised U.S. attorneys to make denaturalization a prime precedence, shifting prosecution of these instances from a specialised unit in Washington, D.C., to U.S attorneys’ places of work. The memo also expanded the listing of crimes which may put an particular person at risk of dropping their citizenship, including Medicaid fraud or instances referred to the U.S attorney’s workplace “in connection with pending criminal charges.”
“The more enthusiastic a U.S. attorney is to appease the president, the more likely it is that they will make denaturalization a priority,” Chishti said in an interview. “I would say that by decentralizing it [by giving individual U.S. attorney’s offices wider discretion], it has clearly created opportunities for U.S. attorneys to curry favor with the White House.”
Nevada’s U.S. attorney’s workplace did not reply to questions about whether denaturalization will be a precedence, how many denaturalization instances it has pursued or how the workplace is coordinating with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on denaturalization efforts.
In a response to a request for remark, a spokeswoman for the workplace said that the June criticism against the Nevada resident alleges “numerous misrepresentations and unlawful acts that adversely reflect her moral character.”
How is someone denaturalized?
The course of to be denaturalized is legally difficult, requiring that the federal authorities has “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that someone violated naturalization fraud legal guidelines.
Those violations embody a particular person acquiring citizenship without assembly the {qualifications} for naturalization, such as dwelling in the U.S. for a required period of time, or a willful misrepresentation of info that would have affected their grant of naturalization. An individual can also be denaturalized if they gained citizenship through navy service but were not honorably discharged or if they are a member of the Communist Party.
To kick off denaturalization proceedings, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services must first advocate to the DOJ that an particular person’s standing be revoked either on prison or civil grounds. Following that, prosecutors, such as U.S. attorneys, can then select to file that criticism in federal court. Such instances can typically take years and span several presidential administrations.
Given how legally difficult it can be, Michael Kagan, govt director of the UNLV Immigration Clinic, said he is not too involved about naturalized residents turning into caught up in the administration’s denaturalization efforts. Instead, Kagan likened the administration’s efforts to “psychological warfare” meant to make naturalized residents unsure about their legal standing.
“Denaturalization legally is a very narrow procedure used for some very exceptional circumstances,” Kagan said. “While there’s been an increase in cases nationwide, I would discourage most naturalized citizens from feeling any sense of panic from this.”
Kagan famous that the two instances in Nevada were both “colorful” and reflective of the kind of instances that were sometimes pursued under prior administrations. In the first case, the defendant utilized for citizenship a number of instances under totally different names and the second case concerned a man who had several assault prices which he pled guilty to in 2024. Given that the instances were lately filed, Kagan famous it’s not clear if those info are contested by the defendants.
Another difficulty that Kagan introduced up is that defendants in civil instances, such as the girl in the June case, are not entitled to appointed attorneys if they can not afford them. Civil instances also do not have a statute of limitations, that means that a criticism can be filed a long time after the alleged crime. This could have large implications for defendants: In the case involving the Nevada girl who utilized under a false identify, it could also have an effect on the citizenship of her little one, for whom she also filed a petition.
“I think they want to make naturalized citizens feel unwelcome and uneasy and insecure,” Kagan said. “The point of citizenship is sacred, and you should not have to feel anxious about your citizenship.”