U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on Aug. 11 that it partnered with the Department of Justice on the filing of 25 civil denaturalization cases — an action the agencies described as the largest denaturalization effort yet. The complaints were filed in federal district courts across the country over the preceding few weeks.
The cumulative number is the more striking figure. According to USCIS, the Justice Department has filed 123 civil denaturalization complaints since Jan. 20, 2025 — which the agency calls the most in recorded history. Denaturalization was for decades a rarely used tool, reserved for a handful of cases a year, most famously against former Nazi concentration-camp guards. The current pace represents a categorical change in how often the government asks a court to strip citizenship.
The legal basis has not changed. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalized citizen’s citizenship may be revoked, and the certificate of naturalization canceled, if the naturalization was illegally obtained or was obtained by concealing important facts or by lying. In practice that means the government must tie the alleged misconduct back to the naturalization process itself — not merely show that the person later committed a crime.
The newly filed cases follow that pattern. USCIS describes complaints against individuals accused of concealing prior removal orders and using a second identity to re-enter the country and later naturalize; of obtaining lawful permanent residence through marriage fraud, including one case involving simultaneous marriages; and of lying at a naturalization interview about criminal conduct that would have made the applicant ineligible. The cases were filed in districts including Arkansas, Florida, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Maryland. These are allegations in civil complaints, not convictions — the government still has to prove its case, and courts have long required it to meet a heightened evidentiary burden before revoking citizenship.
For the overwhelming majority of naturalized citizens, this enforcement wave changes nothing. The cases USCIS describes involve alleged fraud or concealment during the immigration process, frequently paired with serious criminal conduct. What the trend does underscore is how much weight the government places on the accuracy of what applicants disclose — years or even decades after the fact. Prior names and identities, prior removal proceedings, prior arrests, and the bona fides of a qualifying marriage remain reviewable long after a certificate is issued. Anyone with a complicated immigration history should get it reviewed and disclosed correctly on the front end, at the I-485 or N-400 stage, rather than discovering the problem in a federal complaint later.
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Source: USCIS Newsroom (news release)