The U.S. government on Thursday sued New York City, seeking to block enforcement of several local laws its says are designed to impede its ability to enforce federal immigration laws.
In a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court, the U.S. government said New York City’s “sanctuary provisions” are unconstitutional, and preempted by laws giving it authority to regulate immigration.
Immediately after Zohran Mamdani became the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City last month, one Republican congressman had a provocative suggestion for the Trump administration: “He needs to be DEPORTED.”
The Uganda-born Mamdani obtained U.S. citizenship in 2018 after moving to the United States with his parents as a child. But Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., argued in his post on X that the Justice Department should consider revoking it over rap lyrics that, he said, suggested support for Hamas.
The Justice Department declined to comment on whether it has replied to Ogles’ letter, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said of his claims about Mamdani, “Surely if they are true, it’s something that should be investigated.”
Trump himself has claimed without evidence that Mamdani is an illegal immigrant, and when erstwhile ally Elon Musk was asked about deporting another naturalized citizen, he suggested he would consider it.
The congressman’s proposal dovetails with a priority of the Trump administration to ramp up efforts to strip citizenship from other naturalized Americans. The process, known as denaturalization, has been used by previous administrations to remove terrorists and, decades ago, Nazis and communists.
But the Trump DOJ’s announcement last month that it would “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings” has sparked alarm among immigration lawyers and advocates, who fear the Trump administration could use denaturalization to target political opponents.
Although past administrations have periodically pursued denaturalization cases, it is an area ripe for abuse, according to Elizabeth Taufa, a lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
“It can be very easily weaponized at any point,” she said.
Noor Zafar, an immigration lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said there is a “real risk and a real threat” that the administration will target people based on their political views.
Asked for comment on the weaponization concerns, a Justice Department spokesperson pointed to the federal law that authorizes denaturalizations, 8 U.S.C. 1451.
“We are upholding our duty as expressed in the statute,” the spokesperson said.
Immigrant groups and political opponents of Trump are already outraged at the way the Trump administration has used its enforcement powers to stifle dissent in cases involving legal immigrants who do not have U.S. citizenship.
ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist engaged in campus protests critical of Israel, for more than 100 days before he was released. Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was also detained for two months over her pro-Palestinian advocacy.
More broadly, the administration has been accused of violating the due process rights of immigrants it has sought to rapidly deport over the objection of judges and, in cases involving alleged Venezuelan gang members and Salvadoran man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Supreme Court.
Denaturalization cases have traditionally been rare and in past decades focused on ferreting out former Nazis who fled to the United States after World War II under false pretenses.
But the approach gradually changed after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Aided by technological advances that made it easier to identify people and track them down, the number of denaturalization cases has gradually increased.
It was the Obama administration that initially seized on the issue, launching what was called Operation Janus, which identified more than 300,000 cases where there were discrepancies involving fingerprint data that could indicate potential fraud.
But the process is slow and requires considerable resources, with the first denaturalization as a result of Operation Janus secured during Trump’s first term in January 2018.
That case involved Baljinder Singh, originally from India, who had been subject to deportation but later became a U.S. citizen after assuming a different identity.
In total, the first Trump administration filed 102 denaturalization cases, with the Biden administration filing 24, according to the Justice Department spokesperson, who said figures for the Obama administration were not available. The new Trump administration has already filed five. So far, the Trump administration has prevailed in one case involving a man originally from the United Kingdom who had previously been convicted of receiving and distributing child pornography. The Justice Department declined to provide information about the other new cases.
Overall, denaturalization cases are brought against just a tiny proportion of the roughly 800,00 people who become naturalized citizens each year, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
‘Willful misrepresentation’
The government has two ways to revoke citizenship, either through a rare criminal prosecution for fraud or via a civil claim in federal court.
The administration outlined its priorities for civil enforcement in a June memo issued by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, which listed 10 potential grounds for targeting naturalized citizens.
Examples range from “individuals who pose a risk to national security” or who have engaged in war crimes or torture, to people who have committed Medicaid or Medicare fraud or have otherwise defrauded the government. There is also a broad catch-all provision that refers to “any other cases … that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
The denaturalization law focuses on “concealment of a material fact” or “willful misrepresentation” during the naturalization proceeding.
The ACLU’s Zafar said the memo leaves open the option for the Trump administration to at least try to target people based on their speech or associations.
“Even if they don’t think they really have a plausible chance of succeeding, they can use it as a means to just harass people,” she added.
The Justice Department can bring denaturalization cases over a wide range of conduct related to the questions applicants for U.S. citizenship are asked, including the requirement that they have been of “good moral character” in the preceding five years.
Immigration law includes several examples of what might disqualify someone on moral character grounds, including if they are a “habitual drunkard” or have been convicted of illegal gambling.
The naturalization application form itself asks a series of questions probing good moral character, such as whether the applicant has been involved in violent acts, including terrorism.
The form also queries whether people have advocated in support of groups that support communism, “the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship” or the “unlawful assaulting or killing” of any U.S. official.
Failure to accurately answer any of the questions or the omission of any relevant information can be grounds for citizenship to be revoked.
In 2015, for example, Sammy Chang, a native of South Korea who had recently become a U.S. citizen, had his citizenship revoked in the wake of his conviction in a criminal case of trafficking women to work at a club he owned.
The government said that because Chang had been engaged in the scheme during the time he was applying for naturalization, he had failed to show good moral character.
But in both civil and criminal cases, the government has to reach a high bar to revoke citizenship. Among other things, it has to show that any misstatement or omission in a naturalization application was material to whether citizenship would have been granted.
In civil cases, the government has to show “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt” in order to prevail.
“A simple game of gotcha with naturalization applicants isn’t going to work,” said Jeremy McKinney, a North Carolina-based immigration lawyer. “It’s going to require significant materiality for a judge to strip someone of their United States citizenship.”
Targeting rap lyrics
In his June 26 tweet, Ogles attached a letter he sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to consider pursuing Mamdani’s denaturalization, in part, because he “expressed open solidarity with individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.”
Ogles cited rap lyrics that Mamdani wrote years ago in which he expressed support for the “Holy Land Five.”
That appears to be a reference to five men involved in a U.S.-based Muslim charitable group called the Holy Land Foundation who were convicted in 2008 of providing material support to the Palestinian group Hamas. Some activists say the prosecution was a miscarriage of justice fueled by anti-Muslim sentiment following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Ogles’ office and Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to requests seeking comment.
Speaking on Newsmax in June, Ogles expanded on his reasons for revoking Mamdani’s citizenship, suggesting the mayoral candidate had “failed to disclose” relevant information when he became a citizen, including his political associations. Ogles has alleged Mamdani is a communist because of his identification as a democratic socialist, although the latter is not a communist group.
The Trump administration, Ogles added, could use a case against Mamdani to “create a template for other individuals who come to this country” who, he claimed, “want to undermine our way of life.” (Even if Mamdani were denaturalized, he would not, contrary to Ogles’ claim, automatically face deportation, as he would most likely revert his previous status as a permanent resident.)
In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on June 29, Mamdani said calls for him to be stripped of his citizenship and deported are “a glimpse into what life is like for many Muslim New Yorkers and many New Yorkers of different faiths who are constantly being told they don’t belong in this city and this country that they love.”
Targeting Mamdani for his rap lyrics would constitute a very unusual denaturalization case, said Taufa, the immigration lawyer.
But, she added, “they can trump up a reason to denaturalize someone if they want to.”
McKinney, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the relatively low number of denaturalization cases that are filed, including those taken up during Trump’s first term, shows how difficult it is for the government to actually strip people of their citizenship.
“But what they can be very successful at is continuing to create a climate of panic and anxiety and fear,” he added. “They’re doing that very well. So, mission accomplished in that regard.”
Last week, Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that called for a federal investigation to determine whether New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda — should be subject to denaturalization proceedings based on eight-year-old rap lyrics that Ogles claims could constitute material support for terrorism. At a news conference Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that the allegations, “if true, were something that should be investigated.”
And earlier in June, the Justice Department issued a memo announcing its directive to “maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings.”
The Trump administration made denaturalization a priority during the first term, creating a special Justice Department section to pursue these cases. The administration now appears positioned to expand these efforts with a policy requiring that denaturalization be pursued wherever legally possible.
As the apparent next step in the Trump administration’s mass deportation regime, this rarely used but potentially far-reaching government power is getting newfound attention. As legal scholars who study denaturalization, we believe the new Justice Department policy could significantly expand the circumstances under which naturalized Americans might lose their citizenship in ways that raise serious constitutional questions.
… the [Supreme] court held denaturalization was unconstitutional in most circumstances, leaving open only cases in which someone “illegally procured” citizenship by not meeting requirements or obtaining it through fraud or concealment of material facts. In the half-century after this decision, fewer than 150 Americans were denaturalized, mostly former war criminals who had hidden their pasts.
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More fundamentally, we argue that aggressive denaturalization policies conflict with constitutional principles of citizenship. The framers envisioned citizens as sovereign, serving as the source of government power rather than its subjects. Allowing the government to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans for decades-old conduct creates exactly the kind of arbitrary governmental authority the Constitution was designed to prevent.
The administration’s “maximal enforcement” approach means pursuing cases beyond clear instances of fraud, potentially including any situation in which evidence might support denaturalization regardless of strength or age. This approach will inevitably result in cases involving ambiguous evidence that can be arbitrarily interpreted by the government.
While supporters of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts argue that denaturalization maintains the integrity of the naturalization system, we contend that the policy risks creating different classes of citizenship, with naturalized Americans facing ongoing vulnerability that native-born citizens never experience. This effectively creates the kind of second-class citizenship that our constitutional system forbids.
The Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is not backing down. In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), Mamdani blasted President Donald Trump for what he described as a direct threat to his rights and citizenship. The comments come amid Trump’s escalating rhetoric on immigration enforcement and his vow to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations if reelected.
“The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp, and deported,” Mamdani wrote in a statement posted online. “Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.”
The MAGA movement is reveling in the creativity, severity and accelerating force of President Trump’s historic immigration crackdown.
Once-fringe tactics — an alligator-moated detention camp, deportations to war zones, denaturalization of immigrant citizens — are now being proudly embraced at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
- It’s an extraordinary shift from Trump’s first term, when nationwide backlash and the appearance of cruelty forced the administration to abandon its family separation policy for unauthorized immigrants.
- Six months into his second term — and with tens of billions of dollars in new funding soon flowing to ICE — Trump is only just beginning to scale up his mass deportation machine.
Trump on Tuesday toured a temporary ICE facility in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where thousands of migrants will be detained in a remote, marshland environment teeming with predators.
- MAGA influencers invited on the trip gleefully posted photos of the prison’s cages and souvenir-style “merchandise,” thrilling their followers and horrifying critics.
- Pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer drew outrage after tweeting that “alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now” — widely interpreted as a reference to the Hispanic population of the United States.
Citing the millions of unauthorized immigrants who crossed the border under President Biden, Trump and his MAGA allies have framed the second-term crackdown as a long-overdue purge.
- The result is an increasingly draconian set of enforcement measures designed to deter, expel and make examples out of unauthorized immigrants.
- Some newer members of the MAGA coalition, such as podcaster Joe Rogan, have expressed deep discomfort with the targeting of non-criminal undocumented immigrants.
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Denaturalization of U.S. citizens — once a legal backwater — is gaining traction as Trump and his MAGA allies push the envelope on nativist rhetoric.
- The Justice Department has begun prioritizing stripping naturalized Americans of their citizenship when they’re charged with crimes and “illegally procured or misrepresented facts in the naturalization process.”
- But some MAGA influencers are pushing to weaponize denaturalization more broadly — not just as a legal remedy for fraud, but as a tool to punish ideological opponents.
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https://www.axios.com/2025/07/05/trump-migrants-alligator-alcatraz-denaturalize
According to White House press secretary Karoline [Bimbo #1] Leavitt, President Donald Trump has not yet ruled out stripping U.S. citizenship from New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
During Monday’s White House press briefing, [Bimbo #1] Leavitt answered a question from Fox News’ Peter Doocy, in which he pressed [Bimbo #1] Leavitt on the administration’s position on using denaturalization to prevent Mamdani from becoming mayor of New York City. Rolling Stone reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez posted the exchange to Bluesky, in which Leavitt left the door open for Trump to pursue deportation after Doocy’s follow-up question.
“He doesn’t want this individual to be elected,” [Bimbo #1] Leavitt said in response to Doocy asking if Trump wants Mamdani deported.
Recent weeks have seen the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” program kick into overdrive.
Militarized federal agents are working hard to meet the White House’s sky-high arrest quotas, and the number of people in immigration detention is surging past record highs. That means focusing even more on otherwise law-abiding people who happen to have irregular immigration statuses ― people who pay taxes, show up to court dates and check-ins, work hard to provide for their families, and followed previous administrations’ rules to apply for humanitarian protections. It also means interrogating people at swap meets, and underground parties, or those who just have brown skin.
The nation disapproves, polling shows. Massive protests around the country ― in both large urban areas and small towns ― have showcased Americans’ fury at having their loved ones and neighbors ripped out of their communities at random.
Across the country, people are also taking action to slow down what they see as the egregious over-enforcement of immigration law, attempting to starve Trump’s mass deportation machine of fuel and to throw sand in its gears.
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But activists and community organizers have worked for generations to slow down deportations ― and, as it turns out, Trump’s deportation agenda relies upon some crucial choke points. Here they are.
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One key opportunity for bystanders to intervene in the deportation process comes during the actual moments where immigration agents may be making an arrest.
Take the case of Bishop-elect Michael Pham, Pope Leo XIV’s first bishop appointment in the United States. On World Refugee Day last week, Pham and other faith leaders visited an immigration court. The ICE agents who in recent weeks have been arresting immigrants showing up to routine hearings in the building “scattered” and did not take anyone into custody, Times of San Diego reported.
In Chicago, two National Guard soldiers appeared in uniform with their mother at her immigration appointment, alongside two members of Congress. The soldiers’ mother returned home without incident.
Not everyone has the star power to discourage detentions by their mere presence. But at courthouses and ICE check-ins where Trump has taken advantage of a legal maneuver known as “expedited removal” to arrest and deport people without due process, volunteers accompanying immigrants can document arrests and sometimes provide informal legal information to people who might not know about ICE’stactics.
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Spreading information about people’s legal rights during interactions with law enforcement, known as “know your rights” information, has also grown enormously popular.
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Getting Everyone Legal Representation: The data is clear. Legal representation is associated withbetter outcomes in immigration court.
That’s because the deck is stacked against people in the immigration legal system. Unlike in criminal court, people in the immigration process are not guaranteed free legal representation if they can’t afford it, even if they’re detained behind bars.
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Opposing Local Cooperation With The Feds: Even though immigration enforcement is a federal job, local cooperation is a crucial part of the operation.
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Fighting Trump’s Massive DHS Budget Increase
President Donald Trump went on several tirades about former friends and political opponents alike on Tuesday, July 1, even threatening to jail a rising political star and a former Biden Cabinet member.
After touring a new detention facility for detainees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Florida, Trump sat down with reporters at “Alligator Alcatraz” to answer a few questions.
Asked about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — who had just officially earned the Democratic nomination on Tuesday — the president said, “A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally.”
Mamdani, 33, was born in Uganda and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. He defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a major election upset as a self-described Democratic Socialist, which also earned Trump’s ire.
“We don’t need a communist in this country,” he said. “But if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation… We’re going to look at everything.”
Trump was also asked about Mamdani’s campaign promises to “stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors.”
His response? “Well then, we’ll have to arrest him.”
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https://people.com/trump-threatens-arrest-2-political-opponents-in-same-press-conference-11764784
Tom Homan, President Donald Trump‘s appointed border czar, issued a warning to New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani on the heels of his mayoral primary victory, saying that immigration enforcement will “double down and triple down on sanctuary cities.”
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Mamdani built his campaign around affordability in the Big Apple and focused on rent freezes. His platform also includes no-cost child care, free buses and “Trump-proofing” the city.
In a link on his campaign website, Mamdani says his administration, should he become mayor, would focus on getting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) out of New York City facilities, end cooperation with the agency, protect personal data from outside jurisdictions and “bolster legal support” for immigrants.
“Donald Trump is tearing at the fabric of New York City in his second term. He has deployed ICE agents to pluck New Yorkers from their families,” Mamdani said on his website.
While speaking on Fox Business with Larry Kudlow, Homan was asked about Mamdani’s immigration platform, saying, “Good luck with that.”
“Federal law trumps him … every day, every hour of every minute,” Homan continued. “We’re going to be in New York City, matter of fact, because it’s a sanctuary city and President Trump made it clear a week and a half ago, we’re going to double down and triple down on sanctuary cities.”
Homan later added: “Were going to concentrate in sanctuary cities because we know they’re releasing public safety threats and national security threats back to the street, so we know we’ve got a problem there.”
https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-border-czar-issues-stark-warning-zohran-mamdani-game-2090822
New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander has told Newsweek that ICE agents expressed feeling “overworked” shortly after detaining him at a downtown court earlier this week.
“I talked to the ICE agents afterward, and it’s clear to me they are being overworked,” Lander said in an interview on June 19.
“I asked what their shifts were. And they say, we really don’t have shifts anymore,” he added.
Poor crybabies should get respectable jobs.
Lander and other critics called the arrest further evidence of what they described as a drift toward authoritarianism by the Trump administration.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Newsweek: “Like many Democrat politicians before him, Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander seems to think obstructing federal law enforcement is his ticket to fame. Unfortunately, it’s just his ticket to being arrested.”
More often than not, these bogus “obstructing” charges are dropped. They are nothing more than harassment.
In response for comment to the suggestion ICE agents are being overworked, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin: “Under Secretary [Bimbo #2] Noem, we are delivering on President Trump’s and the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens to make America safe.”
Repeating a lie doesn’t make it true. Arresting and deporting non-criminal aliens does nothing to make America safe.
