Mass Deportation: Trump Loyalists Plan Denaturalization of American Citizens
- The number of American citizens stripped of their citizenship has accelerated during the Trump Administration, and went well beyond war criminals in seeking Americans to denaturalize.
I was with my mother at her citizenship swearing-in, as she was afraid she’d get lost – to my surprise, I choked up with tears. When a community member swears in my heart swells “Lucky us, they are officially American now.”
One of the less-discussed, but most sinister plans in Project 2025, published by the Heritage Foundation, is the plan to restart denaturalizations of American citizens, on a large scale, to “turbo-charge” them, as Stephen Miller has promised.
Denaturalization is the process of stripping American citizenship from an American who immigrated and became a citizen by naturalization. Before 2017, the process was used extremely rarely, mostly for Nazi war criminals hiding from prosecution in the U.S. About a dozen cases may have been filed in a given year. The Trump Administration accelerated that number and went well beyond war criminals in seeking Americans to denaturalize. The number of citizens pursued went from a dozen per year to 700,000 files reviewed, and 1,600 citizens identified to be pursued. Examples of people pursued for denaturalization in 2018 for citizenship application issues under Trump include:
- Parvez Manzoor Khan, a then 62-year-old Floridian, a truck driver and grandfather of three who’s been a citizen without incident since 2006. He did not report a deportation order; he may not have been aware of it.
- Norma Borgono, then 63, immigrated from Peru in 1989 and became a citizen in 2007. She was secretary to a man who committed loan fraud; for preparing the papers she took a plea deal and cooperated with the authorities; she did not report this crime on her application, and she may not even have been aware of it then.
- Ahsan Ullah, then 32, an electrician and a new father from Brooklyn who was naturalized as a child. USCIS claims he is not related to the uncle who adopted him and brought him over as a child.
- Baljinder Singh, a New Jersey businessman naturalized in 2006. He failed to report a previous deportation order.
Revocation of citizenship is an extraordinary measure, cruel, and until now, unusual. Yet, these ordinary Americans were pursued for lapses in applications that were filed 10 or more years before USCIS initiated an attempt to revoke their citizenship. None are war criminals or even violent criminals. All have established families and productive lives in the U.S. When denaturalization ceases to be rare and extraordinary, any naturalized citizen is fair game.
This is where Trump, Vance, Stephen Miller & Company give away the game. They are after all immigrants, legal, greencard-holding, even those that have naturalized. When immigrants themselves can be convinced that only “illegals” are the target and that they are safe because they have legal status or citizenship, it suppresses the community’s opposition, inures the targets to the obvious hatred directed at them. But Trump’s and Miller’s actions, and recently, their words, show that the game is to expel large numbers of immigrants, however they can. It is one step in pleasing their white nationalist base.
Whom will they pursue? Stephen Miller said at a Colorado Trump rally, referring to photos, “Are these the kids you were raised with? Are these the neighbors you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you want in your city?” At Trump’s October 27 rally in New York at Madison Square Garden, Stephen Miller said “America is for Americans and Americans only.” “America for Americans” was a slogan used by the Ku Klux Klan. After the RNC Convention in July, JD Vance was excoriated on social media for having an Indian-American, Hindu wife and a child named Vivek. A January 6 Capitol rally attendee wrote on X: “. . .Next we’ll see Sen. Mike Lee and JD Vance team up to convince Trump to let in 10 million Indian immigrants. . . .”
Is it hard to guess who will be targeted? Keeping this regime out of office now will be easier than trying to undo their plans once they have control and implement their denaturalization/mass deportation terror plans. Vote for the sanctity of citizenship–vote Harris/Walz and Democrat down the ballot.
Angana Shah, a lawyer who has worked in corporate law in Washington, D.C., and in international rule of law promotion worldwide, now works as a lobbyist for social justice organizations in Michigan.