Tool

Denaturalization is the revocation of U.S. citizenship from a naturalized citizen, meaning someone who was not born a U.S. citizen and later successfully applied to become one. The government can only revoke naturalized citizens’ citizenship in extremely rare circumstances, and denaturalization must always be by order of a federal judge, whether in either a civil case about denaturalization or pursuant to a criminal conviction.

This memo focuses on civil denaturalization, which is at greater risk of being weaponized by authoritarian leadership for several reasons: civil proceedings have no statute of limitations, unlike the criminal statute of limitations (which is for 10 years after naturalization), and a naturalized citizen is not entitled to an attorney, unlike in criminal proceedings.