DOJ Announces Plan to Revoke Citizenship of 12 Foreign-Born Americans for Crimes
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The DOJ says they committed crimes that qualify them for denaturalization. The Trump administration announced it is seeking to revoke the citizenship of 12 foreign-born Americans who officials say committed crimes that qualify them for denaturalization.
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The HillJustice Department moves to strip 12 Americans of their citizenship The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday it is seeking to denaturalize a dozen people from various parts of the country who are accused of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship. Federal prosecutors filed denaturalization actions in U.S. District Courts across the country this week against 12 people, alleging they lied during the naturalization process, including about…
BreitbartOn Friday, officials with the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that they are seeking to denaturalize 12 naturalized American citizens accused of crimes like murder, terrorism, firearms trafficking, marriage fraud, identity fraud, and possessing child pornography, among other things.
PBS NewsHourProsecutors aim to strip U.S. citizenship from diplomat-turned-spy The Trump administration moved this week to denaturalize 11 other people accused of crimes, including child sexual abuse and providing material support to terrorists.
New York TimesTrump Administration Targets 12 Immigrants to Revoke Citizenship The Americans are accused of fraud or other misdeeds that can qualify them to lose their citizenship, but denaturalization has been done rarely in the past.
The Daily WireIn recent months, the Trump administration has kicked off a campaign to denaturalize foreign-born United States citizens, securing 15 denaturalization orders as of April. In total, the Department of Justice has filed 35 denaturalization complaints.
HuffPost“The standard for denaturalization is really high,” Gelatt said. In order to be stripped of your citizenship, the government must prove that you’ve deliberately misled it about something major, like your identity or a serious crime. “These cases have to go through a federal court, and the government has to prove that somebody either concealed some really important fact or misrepresented a fact in their application,” she said.
USA TodayThe Justice Department moved to strip a dozen people of naturalized citizenship, a once-rare practice that the Trump administration has increasingly used.
Fox NewsThe Department of Justice has ramped up its use of a rarely deployed legal tool to strip citizenship, targeting 12 naturalized Americans accused of hiding ties to terrorism, violent crimes, and other offenses and signaling more cases will follow.
Washington ExaminerU.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quinones described Rocha as “one of the most prolific Cuban spies ever uncovered in the United States” and said the denaturalization effort is intended to complete the government’s case against him. Prosecutors allege Rocha secured American citizenship through “lies, concealment, and betrayal” and argued that someone who secretly served communist Cuba should not retain the privileges of U.S. citizenship, even while incarcerated.
Associated PressProsecutors seek to strip U.S. citizenship from diplomat-turned-Cuban spy MIAMI (AP) — Federal prosecutors are seeking to revoke the U.S. citizenship of former U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha, the imprisoned former diplomat who served as a secret agent for Cuba dating back to the 1970s in one of the longest-running betrayals in the history of the foreign service.
Washington TimesThe Justice Department is launching a new push to strip criminal immigrants of their U.S. citizenship, saying they never would have been granted status in the first place if their crimes had been known at the time.
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There are approximately 26 million naturalized citizens as of 2024, according to federal data. That year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it welcomed over 818,000 new citizens.
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HuffPostThe final and official number of people naturalized in 2025 is not yet available, but it appears to be dramatically less than in prior years. In April 2025, according to an NPR report, more than 88,000 people became U.S. citizens. In January 2026, approximately 33,000 people did. There are currently 12 million pending applications for green cards, work visas and naturalization, per NPR, an increase of 2 million since Trump returned to office last year. By comparison, the backlog grew by more than 3 million during Biden’s entire four years in office.
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The DOJ is taking similar denaturalization steps against 43-year-old Salah Osman Ahmed of Somalia, who secured naturalized citizenship in 2007. After getting citizenship, Ahmed traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabaab, killing Ethiopians as part of his mission with the terrorist group. Ahmed was convicted in 2009.
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Fox NewsAnother, Salah Osman Ahmed of Somalia, naturalized in 2007 and pleaded guilty in 2009 to providing material support for terrorists and belonged to the terrorist group al-Shabaab, Fox News Digital learned. The DOJ alleged that joining a terrorist group within five years of naturalization was grounds for revoking citizenship.
The Daily WireAli Yousif Ahmed, 48, an Iraqi national, is also facing denaturalization. He came to the United States in 2009, claiming he and his family were attacked by Al-Qaeda, according to the Justice Department. The Iraqi government contacted the federal government in 2019, requesting that Ahmed be extradited to face criminal charges for the premeditated murder of two Iraqi police officers in 2006.
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Others included Abduvosit Razikov of Uzbekistan, who allegedly entered into a sham marriage to gain citizenship, and Oscar Alberto Pelaez of Colombia, a priest who was convicted in the United States of 13 counts of sexual abuse of a minor, including sodomy, and allegedly lied about the crimes during the naturalization process, Fox News Digital learned.
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Washington TimesOscar Alberto Pelaez, 75, was a priest in Colombia when he sexually abused a teen boy from 1998 to 2000. The clergyman then lied to the U.S. during his naturalization, concealing facts that would have disqualified him from obtaining U.S. citizenship under the “good moral character” test.
BreitbartThe DOJ is also seeking to denaturalize 75-year-old Oscar Alberto Pelaez of Colombia, a Roman Catholic priest who pleaded guilty in 2002 to sexually abusing a child from 1998 to 2000, as well as 46-year-old Abduvosit Razikov of Uzbekistan, who in 2005 paid an American citizen to enter into a sham marriage with him so that he could secure a green card.
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Another case involves Khalid Ouazzani, 48, who prosecutors say “was planning—with two men later convicted of trying to bomb the New York Stock Exchange—ways to support Al-Qaeda” as early as 2003, roughly three years before he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. The Trump administration is now pursuing a denaturalization case against him.
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BreitbartKhalid Ouazzani, a 48-year-old immigrant from Morocco, may be stripped of his naturalized citizenship, awarded to him in 2006, after he provided support to Al-Qaeda alongside two men later convicted of attempting to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.
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Blanche warned during a recent CBS News interview that people "should be worried" if they obtained citizenship through fraud.
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Washington TimesActing Attorney General Todd Blanche teased the new push in an interview with CBS on Wednesday, saying “a lot” of those who won citizenship should have been blocked.
9 details only one outlet reported
Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 HuffPost Even as Trump’s second term as president has been aggressively anti-immigrant, his administration has claimed it’s all about law and order. It’s not that they’re against immigration, they say, it’s just that they want people to enter the country legally.
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02 USA Today Denaturalization in the past has often been rare, applied to people accused of serious crimes and used on people who posed credible threats to public safety or national security, as well as war crimes or crimes against humanity, according to the nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
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03 ABC News Some have been convicted of crimes in the United States, others have allegedly been convicted of crimes in their home country, and the rest are accused of committing immigration fraud.
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04 Breitbart Razikov allegedly paid another American citizen to marry his actual romantic partner from Uzbekistan. A few years later, in 2010, Razikov divorced his sham marriage wife and, in 2012, secured naturalized citizenship.
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05 Fox News Pressed on denaturalization being a "very drastic penalty," Blanche shot back, "It's a very drastic reward being naturalized, committing fraud."
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06 Washington Times They include a Catholic priest from Colombia who sexually abused a child, several men connected with al Qaeda and al-Shabaab, a gun trafficker, and a man from Cuba who became a U.S. ambassador even as he was spying for his native country.
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07 Washington Examiner The Trump administration announced Thursday it will revoke passports for U.S. citizens who owe substantial child support.
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08 Associated Press The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami filed a civil denaturalization complaint Thursday that would complete the Colombian-born Rocha’s fall from grace, stripping him of the citizenship he attained after moving to New York City at age 10 with his widowed mother and two siblings.
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09 The Daily Wire By comparison, the federal government secured 54 denaturalizations under the Biden administration, the DOJ said.
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