1. United States
2. Iowa
3. Letter

Citizenship Is Not Conditional: Stop the Quiet Stripping of Naturalized Americans’ Rights For nearly three decades, the federal government stripped citizenship from naturalized Americans in about 11 cases a year — reserved for war criminals and the rare egregious fraud. As of this year, the Department of Justice has ordered its own field offices to deliver 100 to 200 denaturalization cases every single month. That is not law enforcement. That is a quota, and it is being filled. On June 11, 2026, DOJ’s Civil Division directed attorneys to “maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence.” The categories now in scope go far beyond violent criminals: undisclosed past conduct, paperwork errors made years or decades ago, and vague “national security” concerns that immigration experts warn are wide enough to be applied politically, against anyone the government decides it doesn’t like. Roughly 26 million naturalized Americans — neighbors, coworkers, veterans, parents of U.S.-born children — now live one reopened file away from losing citizenship they earned honestly, years or decades in the past. This is how it starts: quietly, through a memo, with a quota, aimed first at people few will defend, and expanding from there. Silence from elected officials is how it continues. I am asking you to do one thing without equivocation: publicly commit to co-sponsoring and fighting for legislation that requires judicial review and narrow, fraud-specific standards before any American can be denaturalized — and to say so on the record, now, not after this tool has already been used against people who trusted this country to keep its word. Your silence is a choice. I’m asking you not to make it.