The Daily Fuckup

The Justice Department said Monday, July 20, 2026, that it filed denaturalization actions against 10 naturalized U.S. citizens in federal courts over the previous 30 days. The department said the complaints involve people accused of serious offenses including child sexual abuse, health care and wire fraud, immigration fraud, and cocaine trafficking. Those are civil actions seeking to revoke citizenship; they are not final judgments, and the people named in the complaints remain citizens unless and until a court orders otherwise. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-revoke-us-citizenship-10-naturalized-criminals-including-child?utm_source=openai))

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, naturalized citizenship can be revoked if it was illegally procured or obtained through concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation. DOJ said the complaints fit that framework. In the department’s telling, the cases are about lies or omissions in the naturalization process, not a new basis for stripping citizenship after the fact. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-revoke-us-citizenship-10-naturalized-criminals-including-child?utm_source=openai))

The July filings line up with a Civil Division memo issued in 2025 that says the division should "prioritize and maximally pursue" denaturalization proceedings in all viable cases and lists categories that include national security matters, war crimes, gang and cartel activity, sex offenses, and fraud. DOJ’s latest announcement shows that policy being used in new cases, but the release itself does not change the legal standard or claim that citizenship is already gone. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/civil/media/1404046/dl?inline=&utm_source=openai))

The practical fight is likely to be over records: what applicants disclosed, what they hid, when they hid it, and whether the government can prove the alleged misstatements were material enough to undo naturalization. Denaturalization remains an extraordinary remedy, but DOJ is signaling that it intends to keep filing these cases where it says the facts and the law line up. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-moves-revoke-us-citizenship-10-naturalized-criminals-including-child?utm_source=openai))