The Daily Fuckup

The Justice Department has been adding denaturalization cases in stages this year, with a fresh July 20 batch joined to earlier announcements in May and June. On May 8, officials said they were seeking to denaturalize 12 naturalized citizens. On June 8, they announced another 17 cases. And on July 20, the department said it had filed 10 more denaturalization actions against naturalized citizens it accuses of hiding serious wrongdoing during the naturalization process.

The legal point matters. These announcements describe cases the government has filed in federal court; they are not completed revocations of citizenship. A denaturalization complaint can accuse someone of fraud, concealment, or other disqualifying conduct, but citizenship remains in place unless and until a judge orders it removed. In other words, the government can ask for denaturalization. It cannot declare the process finished just by issuing a press release.

The July 20 cases, according to the department, involve allegations ranging from child sexual abuse and health care fraud to wire fraud, immigration fraud, and conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute. The earlier batches were framed differently — one centered on alleged concealment of terrorist support or war crimes, and the other on cases involving sex offenses, fraud, and drug crimes — but the throughline is the same: the department is using denaturalization as a recurring enforcement tool against people it says obtained citizenship illegally.

What the public record shows at this point is a series of filings, not a string of completed losses of citizenship. That distinction is important because denaturalization is one of the most serious actions the government can seek against a citizen, and the burden remains on prosecutors to prove each case in court. For now, the government has filed denaturalization complaints in May, June, and July. It has not, on the materials reviewed here, shown that citizenship has actually been revoked in those batches.