Trump is attempting to change who is, and who can become, an American. In keeping with this goal, the DOJ recently said it would prioritize a process called denaturalization, which involves stripping some Americans of their citizenship.

Thursday, July 3

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President Donald Trump is trying to aggressively alter American identity by making citizenship harder to obtain and — in light of a recent alarming memo from the Department of Justice — easier to lose.

Staying on the topic of citizenship, this edition we also look at where the legal fight against Trump’s attempt to reinterpret the Constitution and end birthright citizenship stands after the Supreme Court curtailed nationwide injunctions.

Despite everything going on right now, I hope you can still find reason to celebrate the 249th anniversary of America’s founding.

Thank you so much for reading and for your support.

– Jacob Knutson, reporter

Catch up quickly

- Amid growing concern over dire conditions in immigrant detention centers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told lawmakers this week that a 75-year-old man recently died in its custody. The man, a Cuban national, had been in the U.S. for almost 60 years after being paroled into the country as a teen. He was the 12th person to die in ICE custody so far this fiscal year.

- The Department of Justice (DOJ) appealed a judge’s ruling against Trump’s executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie. The appeal came just days after a different federal judge struck down Trump’s order targeting law firm Susman Godfrey, describing it as an unconstitutional assault on protected speech.

- Kilmar Abrego Garcia is set to remain in jail at least until July 16 after a judge reversed an earlier ruling saying the government should not detain him pending trial. Abrego’s lawyers asked for the reversal after the DOJ said ICE would begin deportation proceedings to remove him to a third country if he was released from jail.

Trump’s war on citizenship

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A through line of Trump’s second term has been to change who is, and who can become, an American.

By attempting to end birthright citizenship, making citizenship harder to access and easier to deny, and clamping down on immigration — legal and otherwise — the Trump administration is attempting to remake the fundamental character of the country.

“NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration,” senior White House aide Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s mass deportation campaign, said in a post last week after Zohran Mamdani, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda, won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary.

In keeping with Trump’s goal, the DOJ recently said it would begin aggressively stripping some Americans of their citizenship through a process called denaturalization. Permitted by federal law, the process allows the government to take away citizenship from a naturalized citizen under very specific situations, such as if the person’s citizenship was obtained illegally through fraud.

In a memo last month, the department told its Civil Division to “prioritize and maximally pursue” denaturalization proceedings against broad categories of people, such as those who allegedly “pose a potential danger to national security,” have committed human rights violations or have supported criminal organizations.

While the department told the division to use the tactic against naturalized citizens who have allegedly committed serious crimes, the division was ultimately given wide latitude in deciding when to pursue denaturalization.

“These categories are intended to guide the Civil Division in prioritizing which cases to pursue; however, these categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance,” the memo continues. “Further, the Civil Division retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate.”

While rare throughout much of U.S. history, denaturalization was frequently used in the early years of the Cold War before the Supreme Court heavily curtailed the tactic in 1967. It resurged in use during the Obama administration and further expanded during Trump's first term.

In response to the memo, some legal experts have said they fear the DOJ will use denaturalization as a tool of political repression against naturalized citizens. Other experts have said they do not expect denaturalization cases to significantly rise from previous years because the cases are time-consuming and because of ongoing staffing issues within the Civil Division.

The DOJ’s shift to prioritizing denaturalization comes as prominent supporters of the president, including members of Congress, are calling on the department to strip citizenship from Trump’s political rivals.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) accused Mamdani of supporting terrorists through rap lyrics he wrote, and asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to strip him of his citizenship and deport him.

The White House threw its weight behind Ogles’ claims Monday. After being asked if Trump thinks it’s worthwhile for the DOJ to investigate Mamdani based on Ogles’ assertions, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump does not want Mamdani to win before tacitly approving of a probe.

“I have not seen those claims, but surely if they are true, it’s something that should be investigated,” Leavitt said.

Of course, it’s hard to determine if something is true without first investigating it.

Trump amplified Ogles’ accusations against Mamdani in a press conference Tuesday.

“A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally,” Trump claimed of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. “We’re going to look at everything,” the president added.

In that same conference, Trump said that his administration could even deport citizens from the country, which would violate the Constitution, Supreme Court precedent and federal law.

Then on Wednesday, Trump doubled down on his attack on Mamdani.

"As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards. I’ll save New York City, and make it ‘Hot’ and ‘Great’ again, just like I did with the Good Ol’ USA!"

Trump’s assault on citizenship isn’t a new phenomenon in U.S. history. Several waves of anti-immigrant, nativist fervor have of course gripped the country in the past, and previous presidents responded as Trump has, by cracking down on immigration, making it harder to become a citizen and carrying out mass deportation operations.

What’s different now is that Trump is carrying out mass deportations, which are just part of his goal to alter American identity, with tools that have never existed before — not even in modern U.S. history.

For example, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, with help from the Department of Government Efficiency, is building a searchable national citizenship data system, apparently to prevent noncitizens from voting, NPR reported.

The new system moves the U.S. closer to having a national roster of citizens, something the country has long resisted, in part because conservative lawmakers feared the possibility of government officials abusing highly personal data to retaliate against their political enemies.

Trump is set to gain even more resources to enact his mass deportation effort through his so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The legislation is set to allocate $170.7 billion to immigration- and border enforcement-related programs over the next four years.

To put that figure in perspective, ICE currently has an annual budget of around $8 billion.

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Where the fight against Trump’s birthright citizenship order stands

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to curtail nationwide injunctions, parties challenging Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship are now attempting to secure other forms of broad relief.

Almost immediately after the court’s ruling, civil rights organizations filed amended complaints asking several different courts to certify a nationwide class of babies and expectant parents who are subject to Trump’s order.

Legal experts I spoke with this week said that while class actions can potentially lead to the same broad relief as nationwide injunctions, such suits are complex to litigate and those pursuing them are likely to hit stumbling blocks.

David Sugerman, an Oregon attorney who has litigated class actions for around three decades, told me that through other major rulings in recent years, the Supreme Court has steadily made it harder to certify class actions.

As a result of these recent ruling, defendants now have significant leverage to pick apart classes. In defending Trump’s executive order, the government is likely to claim that the people seeking certification are too dissimilar to form a cohesive class.

“What they’ll say is, ‘Every case is different. His citizenship facts are different from hers. She’s a felon. He’s illegal. They weren’t really born here,’” Sugerman said. “They can tie this up for a very long time.”

Other legal experts told me that there may be a renewed focus on lawsuits brought by state governments, as the Supreme Court appeared to leave room for judges to issue relief similar to a nationwide injunction when a state sues the federal government.

Democratic states who sued to block Trump’s order may now be taking that approach. In a hearing, they requested an expedited court schedule to evaluate whether relief akin to a nationwide injunction is warranted or if alternative remedies are needed.

The bottom line is lawsuits against Trump’s order are proceeding, but getting relief will now be more difficult, and it may be patchy, potentially allowing the order to eventually go into effect in some parts of the country but not others.

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To do list

- This Fourth of July may be a good time to read the newly published Anti-Autocracy Handbook, written by a team of legal and political scholars. The free handbook is a call to action to defend democracy, truth and academic freedom.

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