Trump Admin to Strip US Citizenship from Foreigners Suspected of Immigration Fraud in Historic Crackdown
Trump administration officials announced a sweeping immigration crackdown Monday in which they plan to revoke the citizenship of over a dozen individuals accused of fraud.
A total of 17 U.S. citizens have been targeted for revocation, with the Department of Justice calling it the biggest-ever denaturalization operation in American history, according to an exclusive report from CBS News.
The federal government usually denaturalizes a foreign-born American citizen if they have obtained their status illegally through fraud, lied on immigration paperwork, or concealed a criminal history.
Some of the 17 citizens who have been identified for revocation were reportedly convicted of grave or violent offenses, including sex crimes against children. They also hail from a wide array of countries.
CBS News specifically highlighted a Haitian immigrant who is accused of sexually abusing his daughter; a man from the former Yugoslavia who was found guilty of sexually abusing a child under age 15; a Mexican immigrant convicted of receiving sexually explicit images of minors; a former Catholic priest from Colombia accused of child sex abuse; and a Filipino man who pleaded guilty to a child sex crime.
Additionally, the group includes an Indian immigrant who allegedly filed fraudulent H-1B visa petitions; the daughter of a Colombian drug trafficker who stands accused of money laundering; a Jamaican man convicted of wire fraud; and a Cuban woman accused of defrauding a tribal casino.
The remaining individuals were targeted for using false identities.
Federal court filings showed that DOJ attorneys accused them of lacking “good moral character,” which is a prerequisite for naturalization.
This isn’t the first time such a strategy has been employed during Trump’s second term.
In May, WTTG-TV reported that the DOJ was seeking to denaturalize 12 people and noted that the tactic is rare, having only been used about a dozen times per year between 1990 and 2017.
Trump’s team seems to be taking full advantage of its authority on the matter, however, in an effort to increase these statistics.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the DOJ has a “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to immigration fraud.
“Criminal aliens are lying about their past crimes, including drug dealers, sexual predators, and fraudsters,” Blanche said, according to CBS News.
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said the Trump administration will “continue to use every lawful avenue to denaturalize and remove aliens.”
“American citizenship is a privilege, and it must be earned honestly,” he added. “If you come here, break our laws, and lie in your immigration proceedings, you forfeit that privilege.”
Individuals can appeal, but once they are denaturalized, they lose all the rights and protections of being an American citizen, including being shielded from deportation.
This latest move is in line with President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration agenda, which has also targeted those who express anti-American sentiments and engage in corruption.
In 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had revoked hundreds of visas from radicalized students who caused chaos on college campuses across the country instead of focusing on their education.
“I think it’s stupid for any country in the world to welcome people into their country that are going to go to your universities as visitors — they’re visitors — and say, ‘I’m going to your universities to start a riot. I’m going to your universities to take over a library and harass people.’ I don’t care what movement you’re involved in,” Rubio told reporters.
“We [revoke] every day,” he added. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa … At some point, I hope we run out, because we’ve gotten rid of all of them.”
RUBIO: We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa
REPORTER: You’re saying it could be more than 300?
RUBIO: Sure. At some point I hope we run out because we’ve gotten rid of all of them. pic.twitter.com/l2RprBGoNQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 27, 2025
This recent escalation in immigration enforcement has been particularly prevalent following the discovery of mass fraud in Minnesota earlier this year, when multiple day care centers — many run by Somali immigrants — were found to have had no children enrolled, yet were still receiving massive amounts of taxpayer dollars.
It even spawned a nationwide task force that’s being led by Vice President J.D. Vance in an effort to seek out fraudulent activities, including immigration related crimes.
In April, Vance said his team had already identified over $6 billion in government contracts that were linked to potentially fraudulent businesses.
Last month, the vice president said the federal government would be deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from the state of California due to high levels of fraud.
“There are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn’t taking its program seriously,” he declared.
Earlier this year, Blanche announced that the Justice Department had initiated over 8,000 fraud cases related to stolen taxpayer dollars, adding that “these cases represent a fraction of the fraud ripping off our country every day.”
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