The Trump DOJ is dramatically expanding its campaign to revoke US citizenship from naturalized Americans accused of hiding terrorism ties, violent crimes, immigration fraud, and other serious misconduct during the naturalization process.
The new push, according to reports, marks one of the most aggressive uses of denaturalization in modern American history and reflects President Donald Trump’s broader America First effort to restore consequences inside an immigration system that has been abused for decades.
The Department of Justice announced cases against roughly a dozen foreign-born US citizens, with targets originally from countries including Iraq, Somalia, China, India, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Gambia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Bolivia.
Officials said the cases involve allegations ranging from concealed terror affiliations and war crimes to child sexual abuse, sham marriages, false identities, and immigration fraud.
The message is quite clear: American citizenship is not a shield for foreign criminals who lied to obtain it. Naturalization, they argue, is a privilege granted by the United States—not a loophole for people who concealed dangerous pasts.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department would pursue those who misrepresented themselves to become Americans.
Anyone “who intentionally concealed their criminal histories or misrepresented themselves during the naturalization process will face the fullest extent of the law,” Blanche said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
One of the most serious cases involves Ali Yousif Ahmed, who obtained citizenship after claiming he fled Iraq in 2009 because al Qaeda terrorists had attacked his family. Authorities now say Iraq sought his extradition in 2019 after he allegedly murdered two Iraqi police officers while serving as an al Qaeda leader.
Federal officials allege Ahmed omitted that information from the U.S. government. The case has become a stark example of why Trump officials say deeper scrutiny is needed before and after citizenship is granted.
Another case involves Salah Osman Ahmed of Somalia, who naturalized in 2007 and later pleaded guilty in 2009 to providing material support for terrorists and belonging to al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.
The Justice Department argues that joining a terrorist organization within five years of naturalization can be grounds for revoking citizenship. For immigration hawks, the case underscores the danger of treating citizenship as irreversible even when national-security issues emerge.
The crackdown also includes Oscar Alberto Pelaez, a Colombian-born Catholic priest convicted in the United States of 13 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, including sodomy. Authorities allege he lied about the crimes during the naturalization process.
Another target, Abduvosit Razikov of Uzbekistan, allegedly entered into a sham marriage to obtain citizenship. Other cases include individuals accused of using false identities, concealing serious crimes, or committing immigration fraud.
In a separate announcement, the Justice Department said it is seeking to denaturalize Manuel Rocha, a former American diplomat who admitted in a criminal case to acting as a Cuban spy.
The Rocha case points to a broader concern: the United States must be willing to revoke citizenship when people obtain it through deceit and then use American status against American interests.
Denaturalization has historically been rare. Between 1990 and 2017, the federal government filed just over 300 such cases, averaging roughly 11 per year.
Hellbound and Down 