The Key Point

Your Citizenship Isn’t a Permanent Shield

Naturalized citizenship isn’t always untouchable if it was obtained illegally or through material misrepresentation. If you lied on your naturalization application, or unknowingly failed to meet a requirement, the government can come knocking years later, long after you’ve forgotten about that interview.

A Recent Shift

Why Denaturalization Isn’t So Rare Anymore

Because in 2020 the Department of Justice created a section dedicated exclusively to these cases.

Since 2020, when the Department of Justice opened a section dedicated exclusively to denaturalization cases, this issue has stopped being a legal rarity and become a government priority, backed by federal resources, according to the USCIS Policy Manual.

The Consequences

What Can You Lose If the Government Wins a Denaturalization Case?

If the government wins, you could lose your citizenship, your passport, your right to vote, benefits as a citizen, and become exposed to deportation.

Here’s something important to keep in mind: this can only happen to you if you became a citizen through naturalization. Denaturalization targets citizenship obtained through naturalization — not citizenship acquired by being born in the United States. But if you naturalized, it can happen to you through two different paths: civil or criminal.

Source: 8 U.S. Code § 1451 and 18 U.S. Code § 1425

A Case From My Practice

A Case From My Practice

I had a client, a man who naturalized more than fifteen years ago. Hardworking, with his own business, with children already born here. During his citizenship interview, many years ago, he was asked if he had ever been arrested. He said no, because in his mind, since the case had been closed without formal charges, it didn’t count as an arrest. Years later, USCIS reviewed his file during a routine investigation, as part of a program called Operation Janus, which digitized old fingerprints to search for fraud in older naturalization cases. They found the old arrest, buried in a file no one had looked at in two decades. A letter arrived.

The man panicked. He called me thinking they were going to take everything away — the house, the business, the family. He thought there was nothing left to do. But a mistake like that doesn’t always mean you lose your citizenship. It all comes down to whether that lie was material — meaning, had the truth been known at the time, would it have changed the decision to grant citizenship. We worked his case, gathered his complete file, and proved that the old arrest had nothing to do with his original eligibility. Today, he’s still a citizen. Just like that.

The Fine Print

Is It True That a Naturalized Citizen Is No Longer at Any Risk?

No. A material lie in your naturalization can lead to it being revoked years later.

Many people tell me: “but I already have my citizenship, nobody can take anything from me now.” That’s not correct. And now you know it. The Supreme Court, in Maslenjak v. United States, made clear that a lie only counts toward stripping someone’s citizenship if it had what the Court itself called a “natural tendency to influence” the decision to approve the naturalization. That means not every lie leads to denaturalization, and not every mistake puts you at risk.

But I’ll tell you this with the same conviction: every lie, every mistake, every doubt about your case needs to be reviewed by an attorney. Not by you alone at home, guessing, searching the internet at two in the morning. I don’t recommend that to anyone. And if you’ve already received a letter or a lawsuit, you’re not defenseless either. Real defenses exist, and we can build a strategy depending on the case.

Action Plan

What Should You Do If This Worries You?

Gather your N-400, A-File, criminal history, and travel record, don’t destroy documents, and consult an attorney before responding.

If reading this got you thinking about your own case, here’s what you should do — and how to actually be prepared.