Todd Blanche made a promise in May, and on Monday he cashed the check. Twenty-four naturalized citizens from 17 different countries got hit with denaturalization complaints in a single coordinated filing, the largest of its kind in Justice Department history.
Read the list of allegations and it’s not hard to see why the department is moving fast. A North Carolina man convicted of attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon got his citizenship through military service, but prosecutors say he didn’t actually meet the honorable service requirement. A South Carolina man beat and choked his wife so badly she ended up hospitalized, then pleaded guilty to assault and battery, all while holding a U.S. passport he allegedly shouldn’t have had. Others face allegations spanning child sexual abuse, marriage fraud, identity fraud, passport fraud, bank and credit card fraud, and practicing medicine without a license.
“U.S. citizenship is one of our nation’s highest privileges, and it must be obtained lawfully and honestly,” Blanche said in a statement Monday. Justice Department Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate put it more bluntly: “Today marks the largest denaturalization surge in recorded history.”
The 24 complaints, filed between July 20 and August 3, bring the department’s total denaturalization filings to 88 since Trump returned to office on January 20, 2025. That number matters more than it looks. Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department filed 24 denaturalization cases total, according to a DOJ spokesman cited by multiple outlets. Trump’s DOJ blew past that count within months of the second term starting, and now it’s added nearly four times that figure in a single announcement.
DOJ isn’t arguing the bar should be higher. Shumate’s statement Monday framed the entire push as overdue enforcement of rules that were already on the books. “Every one of these individuals committed crimes incompatible with U.S. citizenship,” he said. “We are moving at record speed to denaturalize those who sought to deceive the federal government and abuse the naturalization process.”
