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Causes for denaturalization under the 1906 Act included fraud, racial ineligibility and lack of “good moral character.” In 1907, Congress expanded the laws on loss of citizenship by marking for expatriation all U.S.-born citizens who had naturalized in foreign nations and women who had married foreigners.
I'm not sure we should want to go back and dredge up the shadiest old laws for application today.
(Also since you brought up Obama, why was Obama able to deport so many more people than Trump? And able to do it without terrorizing US cities with secret/poorly trained police, or needing a DHS with a larger budget than most other countries' militaries?)
You're fixated on a "technically this is legal" argument. But you're (perhaps willfully) missing the larger repercussions. This administration has lied and misled about their opponents committing fraud. You know they are not acting in good faith. So why would we want to further empower capricious, inconsistent, and politically motivated behavior?
Obama had an easier time deporting people because, at the time, most people in his party accepted the view that illegal immigration is harmful even without some other crime: https://www.foxnews.com/media/2010-obama-clip-goes-viral-whe.... Back then, even most Democrats embraced requiring immigrant to assimilate. If you think assimilation is important, then it naturally follows that we have to control the number of immigrants at a level where America changes them before they change America. Today, many of them reject assimilation in favor of multi-culturalism. If you embrace multi-culturalism, it’s hard to justify any limit on the number of immigrants. And at that point, illegal immigration just becomes a technicality.
Well because I want the laws enforced. Other politicians had my whole life to enforce immigration law and they chose not to. If it's between this and unchecked immigration status quo, I choose this. This is a lesson to respectfully enforce the rule of law and the will of the people lest they enforce it disrespectfully later.
They accomplished it by terrorizing people based on the color of their skin. There's nothing "simple" about creating a gigantic secret police force. There's nothing "lawful" about blatantly ignoring court orders.
You already conceded that there is no public danger. Your argument boils down yet again Great Replacement nonsense about immigrants being bad for America.
All laws? Because there are several that the administration are actively breaking. Surely you want those enforced too? How about court orders?
> Other politicians had my whole life to enforce immigration law and they chose not to.
I mean, Obama was way more effective at deporting illegal immigrants than Trump. Even by raw numbers. So I'm not sure how you can honestly argue that de-naturalization quotas are necessary now, when they weren't before for an even more effective administration.
The modern law, 8 USC 1451, was enacted in 1952, and was amended repeatedly, including under the Clinton administration. Obama launched a major enforcement operation under the law back in 2009: https://www.hoppocklawfirm.com/operation-janus-operation-sec...
And if you don't like these facts, we have alternate facts in the back room.
Another serious problem is that the context of fraud is not well defined. Does it pertain to immigration or naturalization fraud, or to a general criminal history, or even to traffic violations? It is intentionally under-specified, open to exploitation, to selective enforcement. As noted in the Smithsonian article you linked, Supreme Court cases in the 1950s and ’60s declared unconstitutional several statutes pertaining to denationalization.
The law specifically permits detention pending a determination of immigration status, and in some cases requires such detention: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1226
> Another serious problem is that the context of fraud is not well defined. Does it pertain to immigration or naturalization fraud, or to a general criminal history, or even to traffic violations? It is open to exploitation.
The statute says: "It shall be the duty of the United States attorneys for the respective districts, upon affidavit showing good cause therefor, to institute proceedings in any district court of the United States in the judicial district in which the naturalized citizen may reside at the time of bringing suit, for the purpose of revoking and setting aside the order admitting such person to citizenship and canceling the certificate of naturalization on the ground that such order and certificate of naturalization were illegally procured or were procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation, and such revocation and setting aside of the order admitting such person to citizenship and such canceling of certificate of naturalization shall be effective as of the original date of the order and certificate..." 8 USC 1451(a).
So it is strictly limited to fraud in obtaining citizenship. But the statute is broad as to what constitutes fraud in procuring citizenship. Any "concealment of a material fact or ... willful misrepresentation" can be grounds for revoking citizenship.
> Supreme Court cases in the 1950s and ’60s that declared unconstitutional several statutes pertaining to denationalization.
Not ones related to fraud in procuring naturalized status.
In many cases, they are using detention where a simple bond would work. There's a NY Times opinion today detailing this: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/opinion/mass-detention-im...
It's hard to see this policy choice as anything other than putting pressure on people alleged to have committed a misdemeanor. Meanwhile, it will cost the federal government gobs of money to set up these camps, hire guards, and provide for the detainees. I don't want the government to waste my taxes on cruelty.
But the bonds didn't work! That is what the prior administrations did, and the result of that was 22 million illegal immigrants in the country (according to a Yale and MIT study from 2018: https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twic...).
The law specifically provides for detention and release on bond as two alternatives the Attorney General may choose between:
"On a warrant issued by the Attorney General, an alien may be arrested and detained pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed from the United States. Except as provided in subsection (c) and pending such decision, the Attorney General— (1) may continue to detain the arrested alien; and (2) may release the alien on— (A) bond of at least $1,500 with security approved by, and containing conditions prescribed by, the Attorney General; or (B) conditional parole..." 8 USC 1226(a).
You are not changing their mind and are just giving them a venue to present this abominable "if it's legal it's fine" framework.
Also... what years was Biden president...? Your study from 2018 would be under a Trump admin, before the Biden admin was even able to "stop enforcing" this portion of immigration law and cause the (supposed) flood of undocumented immigrants. So how is it at all relevant except to confuse the issue?
And case law concerning this law, Ozawa vs United States:
> The decision goes on to deny that the common population could construe Ozawa, a man of Japanese descent, as white (thus, making him ineligible under section 2169 of the Revised Statutes of the United States).[9] Thus he could not be naturalized, under the current laws, in 1922.
Yeah, the article is the misleading one. Sure bud. Thanks for coming here to defend racism as a basis for citizenship.
It makes no sense to say the law shouldn't be enforced simply because a different part of that law was struck down as being unconstitutional.
You are here to say “that’s a good law actually, because fraud is bad. So we should enforce this law and retroactively denaturalize those who didn’t meet the criteria at the time.”
You act confused when people tell you this is stupid and racist.
Help me understand your logic.
You’re talking about a different provision of the law that hasn’t been in effect for 74 years. Nobody is talking about enforcing that provision.
>It shall be the duty of the United States attorneys for the respective districts, upon affidavit showing good cause therefor, to institute proceedings in any district court of the United States in the judicial district in which the naturalized citizen may reside at the time of bringing suit, for the purpose of revoking and setting aside the order admitting such person to citizenship and canceling the certificate of naturalization on the ground that such order and certificate of naturalization were illegally procured
It would have been illegal for, as a random example, a Bangladeshi immigrant to become a citizen until 1952. As in that citizenship was illegally procured.
So I’ll ask you directly, should we use these two laws to denaturalize everyone who, as you put it, “committed fraud”?
And what of the children of these “fraudsters”, why should they inherit citizenship from someone who never had it legally?
You are the one willfully misunderstanding the things you yourself are quoting.
> Nobody is talking about enforcing that provision.
You are. You brought up this 1906 law. You are defending its use today to denaturalize citizens.
I don’t have to be super imaginative to extend that to wondering how those people’s children could have inherited citizenship from a noncitizen who committed fraud against the US government.
But we’re all just trying to get back to “law and order” here right? What a stupid person you’d have to be to believe that.