The Justice Department has identified 384 naturalized Americans whose U.S. citizenship it wants revoked, and it has ordered civil litigators in 39 regional U.S. Attorney offices to start filing the cases. The number and the operational scale were reported by the New York Times and confirmed across The Hill, NOTUS, and Newsmax on April 23, 2026.
For context, between 1990 and 2017, the federal government filed 305 denaturalization cases total. That is an average of about 11 per year across twenty-seven years. The administration is now attempting to process 384 in a single wave, on top of a DHS referral pipeline that Trump officials previously ordered up to 200 new cases per month.
What Is Being Redirected to Do This
Denaturalization is a civil proceeding. The civil divisions of U.S. Attorney offices handle it. Those same divisions are the ones that currently prosecute health care fraud against Medicare and Medicaid, defense and procurement fraud against the Pentagon, enforcement actions under federal civil rights laws, and asset forfeiture. Assigning denaturalization as a core workload at 39 offices means those fraud, civil rights, and forfeiture cases get fewer lawyers, fewer hours, and longer delays.
A Justice Department spokesperson framed the push as "pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history" and said the Department is "laser focused on rooting out criminal aliens defrauding the naturalization process." The quote is worth reading carefully. The spokesperson used the volume of referrals, not the quality of cases, as the success metric. High throughput is the goal.
Who Actually Gets Swept In
Denaturalization historically has been rare because it required clear evidence of fraud on the original naturalization application: lying about a criminal record, concealing terrorism or war crime involvement, hiding membership in a persecutorial regime. Courts have required a high bar because the remedy is extraordinary. You take someone's country away.
At 384 cases assigned across 39 regional offices in a single coordinated push, the pressure runs the other direction. Prosecutors get a caseload quota. The political brand of the push is "criminal aliens." The legal reality is that "criminal alien" is not a category in denaturalization law. The statute requires fraud in the naturalization process itself. Many of the 384 are expected to be people with old convictions that postdate their naturalization, which is not the legal standard. Defense attorneys and former DOJ civil division lawyers quoted in the reporting warned that forcing volume through the regional offices will produce weak cases, pressured settlements, and errors that strip people of citizenship based on paperwork disputes from decades ago.
Why It Matters Beyond the 384
A government that can strip citizenship at scale from one category of Americans has built the machinery to do it to any category. The 384 is the opening batch. The policy is the infrastructure. Foreign-born Americans, whether they came here as children, as refugees, as spouses of U.S. citizens, or as workers who followed every rule, are being told that their citizenship is conditional in a way native-born Americans' is not. That is the real announcement.
The pipeline is now active. The referrals are monthly. The offices are assigned. Unless a federal court orders the program paused or Congress uses appropriations power to cut it off, this is the new ordinary at DOJ.
Sources
- The Hill: Justice Department targets citizens in new denaturalization push
- NOTUS: Justice Department Ramps Up Push to Revoke Naturalized Citizenship
- Newsmax: DOJ Targets 384 for Denaturalization in Expanded Crackdown
- GV Wire: Justice Dept. Targets Hundreds of Citizens in New Push for Denaturalization
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