The Daily Fuckup

In a June 8 announcement, the Justice Department said it filed denaturalization actions in federal courts against 17 naturalized U.S. citizens. The department said the complaints involve allegations including sexual abuse of a minor, wire and bank fraud, immigration fraud, drug trafficking, and other serious offenses. Those claims have not been proved in court. No one has lost citizenship yet. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-strip-us-citizenship-17-naturalized-sex-offenders-fraudsters-drug))

The department said naturalized citizenship may be revoked under the Immigration and Nationality Act if it was illegally procured or obtained through concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation. That is the legal theory DOJ says it is using here: the government still has to litigate each case and prove the facts it says made the citizenship invalid in the first place. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-strip-us-citizenship-17-naturalized-sex-offenders-fraudsters-drug))

The June 8 filing set a new high-water mark for the department’s recent denaturalization push, at least by the numbers DOJ has publicly put out. It was larger than DOJ’s May 8 announcement of 12 denaturalization actions, and it followed other cases the department has touted this spring involving alleged fraud, sexual abuse, and other crimes. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-strip-us-citizenship-17-naturalized-sex-offenders-fraudsters-drug))

For now, the government has done something narrower than stripping anyone’s citizenship outright: it has put the accusations into court and asked judges to cancel naturalization where it says the law allows that result. Whether any defendant actually loses citizenship will depend on what DOJ can prove, case by case, under the statute. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-strip-us-citizenship-17-naturalized-sex-offenders-fraudsters-drug))