Trump Said He Would Purge Hundreds of Citizens but the Courts Are Not Playing Along

Donald Trump came into his second term with a bold promise — strip citizenship from hundreds of foreign-born Americans he deemed unworthy of it. His administration compiled a list of 385 targets, pressured attorneys to take on transfers and called itself 'laser-focused' on rooting out fraud in the naturalisation process. It was the kind of sweeping, hardline rhetoric that defined his return to the White House.

But the reality playing out in federal courts is a great deal quieter. Since the start of Trump's second term, the Department of Justice has filed just 35 denaturalisation cases. And a close look at those cases suggests the administration's bark is considerably worse than its bite.

Not Quite the Surge They Promised

An NPR examination of 34 denaturalisation cases publicly announced by the DOJ revealed that the charges brought are far more limited in scope than the White House's tough talk implies, exposing just how much legal and procedural friction stands in the way of a mass citizenship purge.

Boston College law professor Daniel Kanstroom, who specialises in immigration law, said: 'I'm not seeing a major surge of worrisome denaturalisations. To me, it's not at the level of an emergency.'

In the last 16 months, the Trump Justice Department says it has surpassed the number of cases filed during all four years of the Biden administration, with 64 cases according to available data. That figure, however, remains a far cry from the administration's reported ambitions. A document circulated to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Department outlined a plan to denaturalise 100 to 200 people per month in 2026, with USCIS expected to work alongside the DOJ to meet that quota.

Why the Courts Are a Hard Wall to Climb

The gap between the White House's ambitions and its courtroom record is not accidental — it is structural. Naturalised US citizens carry far stronger legal protections than undocumented immigrants, and denaturalisation cases must be heard by federal judges rather than immigration judges employed by the executive branch.

'I certainly don't see an easy pathway for this administration to fast-track denaturalisations or do end runs around the judiciary,' one legal expert told NPR.

Case Western Reserve University law professor Cassandra Robertson pointed to another practical problem. She noted that when dealing with things that happened '20 or 30 or even more years ago, it is incredibly hard for anybody to be able to find witnesses who knew what was going on at that time, or have any kind of documentary evidence,' leaving defendants vulnerable to flimsy evidence.

Robertson also raised concerns that extend well beyond individual cases. She told NPR: 'It's just a dangerous road to go down for denaturalisation. I might not feel sorry for the heinous child abuser who loses their citizenship. I'm not going to lose sleep over that. But I am going to lose sleep over what it does to the system.'

Cases That Look Familiar

The types of cases the DOJ has brought so far are, by most expert accounts, consistent with what previous administrations have pursued. The charges largely involve allegations of fraud, child sexual abuse, terrorist activity, war crimes, and drug trafficking — all instances where defendants allegedly concealed criminal histories to pass the 'good moral character' standard required for US citizenship.

Since Trump took office, the department has lost thousands of skilled lawyers, and the DOJ has now assigned denaturalisation cases to US attorneys' offices across the country, rather than taking those cases in-house. That shift has further complicated the administration's ability to scale up quickly.

A DOJ spokesperson told NPR the department is 'laser-focused on rooting out criminal aliens defrauding the naturalisation process,' adding that it is 'moving at warp speed to ensure fraudsters are held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent.'

The Bigger Picture

There are over 7.9 million immigrants naturalised in the last decade alone, out of an overall US immigrant population estimated by the Pew Research Center at 51.9 million as of June 2025. The cases filed represent a fraction of that figure, though experts caution that the chilling effect on naturalised citizens extends well beyond the courtroom.

Trump has also publicly threatened the citizenship of political figures, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, moves legal observers say are unlikely to survive judicial scrutiny given the protections afforded to naturalised citizens.

The administration's denaturalisation campaign sits at the centre of a broader debate about the rights of naturalised Americans and the limits of executive power. As Robertson warned, the ease with which these cases are pursued today sets a precedent that reaches far beyond the individuals currently targeted — and the courts, for now, are the last line of defence standing between political rhetoric and the rights of millions of Americans who earned their citizenship.