SINCE MY ARRIVAL in the U.S., I have looked forward to the day that I could enjoy the security of American citizenship. But as a green card holder of African origin, I now watch the Trump administration ramp up efforts to strip hundreds of naturalized Americans of their citizenship. With the establishment of a “denaturalization” task force, the supposed permanence of citizenship has become insecure.
In 2019, the Trump administration requested $207.6 million to review 700,000 immigrant files and develop elaborate efforts to punish people for past mistakes by denaturalizing them. As many keep their eyes on Trump’s pet project, the southern “border wall,” the administration continues to use taxpayers’ funds to construct harmful, longer-lasting obstacles to citizenship.
Individuals targeted for denaturalization are often accused of knowingly committing fraud by misrepresenting themselves or concealing a material fact on their naturalization application. The Trump administration decides what constitutes material lies or fraud.
With a president who has expressed his preference for immigrants from predominantly white countries, it’s not surprising which cases the administration chooses to prosecute: If you are not white, you are at risk.
Under previous administrations, denaturalization occurred rarely and was used primarily against war criminals and members of terrorist organizations after a ruling by a federal court in a criminal prosecution or a civil lawsuit. The Trump administration is using it now to strip citizenship from a 64-year-old secretary who emigrated from Peru in 1989 and raised two children on a $500-a-week salary and a 62-year-old truck driver from Pakistan who has been a citizen since 2006 (though errors made by his immigration lawyer and the former Immigration and Naturalization Service caused his case to be reviewed under the Obama administration, which decided not to pursue it).
From 2004 to 2016, the number of denaturalization cases filed averaged 46 each year, according to The New York Times. In 2017 and 2018, “prosecutors filed nearly twice that many cases.” The Trump administration claims its motives are rooted in efficiency rather than an anti-immigrant bent.
Denaturalizing individuals makes them deportable. They lose their citizenship and return to “lawful permanent residency” status, also known as green card status. If they are found to have violated the terms of their status, they can be stripped of permanent residency
and deported without a court hearing. As a green card holder, I am aware that the “permanent” in lawful permanent residency is anything but.
The denaturalization task force is another tactic in Trump’s war on immigrants. Just because the law allows for denaturalization doesn’t mean that people deserve to lose their citizenship. This administration’s goal has never been simply to enforce the law but rather to fashion an America where immigrants of color are not welcome. It is cruel and unwise to spend millions of dollars punishing people instead of funding human needs such as health care.
“I’m worried that people who have been citizens for a long time will now be targeted for denaturalization, and that the effort to defend against a federal denaturalization claim is so expensive that people will just give up,” Matthew Hoppock, a Kansas City immigration attorney who tracks denaturalization policy, told the Miami Herald.
The Justice Department now gets its marching orders from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to hunt down and disrupt the lives of unsuspecting immigrants. The agency, traditionally a service-oriented body, has been conscripted into Trump’s anti-immigrant war.
I share the anxiety and helplessness that immigrants feel when we realize that even American citizenship is no protection from Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. If any of us are under threat from this administration, then none of us are safe. Standing in solidarity with immigrants against this attack is a definition of a true American.
Peniel Ibe, an immigrant from Nigeria, works as a policy associate at the American Friends Service Committee in Washington, D.C.
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