The Trump administration is temporarily reassigning immigration lawyers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to federal prosecutors' offices across the country, part of a widening effort to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans who obtained it through fraud or while otherwise ineligible.

Four former agency officials told Axios about the transfers, which place USCIS attorneys inside U.S. attorney's offices to work directly on denaturalization cases. A DOJ spokesperson said the department welcomed the help. The Justice Department has filed 35 denaturalization cases since President Donald Trump's second term began, 12 of them this month alone, as Breitbart reported.

A June 2025 Justice Department memo listed denaturalization as a top priority for the administration, stating that pursuing such cases "supports the overall integrity of the naturalization program."

Inside the attorney transfer

USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler framed the move as a point of institutional pride:

"We are proud to support this critical effort by providing the Department of Justice with a team of our most skilled immigration law attorneys."

The DOJ spokesperson said the transferred lawyers would help "advance the President's mission to promote public safety and root out fraud." Prior trial or denaturalization experience is not required for the transferred attorneys, only an active law license, a third source told Axios.

Not everyone inside the agencies views the assignments warmly. Anonymous sources described the transfers as being "volun-told" and "being force volunteered." But the administration has made clear that denaturalization is no longer a back-burner item. It is a front-line enforcement priority.

The push builds on groundwork laid during Trump's first term, when the administration stood up a dedicated team of 10 to 15 lawyers to accelerate denaturalization cases. USCIS identified 2,500 potential cases during that period but referred only a fraction to DOJ. USCIS chief Joe Edlow said last September that cases flagged by that first-term team were "still kicking around."

A decentralized approach, by design

Edlow, speaking at an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies last September, laid out his vision for a broader, more distributed enforcement model.

"I think it's just as useful to have a decentralized denaturalization process. I don't need it specially sent to an office. I want every office using this as a benchmark."

That philosophy now appears operational. Rather than funnel every case through a single specialized unit, the administration is embedding USCIS attorneys across multiple U.S. attorney's offices. Edlow made the stakes plain: "If that gives rise to the need for a denaturalization, we're going to move forward."

The scale of the effort extends beyond the 35 cases already filed. DOJ officials have shortlisted 385 people for potential denaturalization charges, Axios reported, citing an April New York Times report. The administration is clearly building a pipeline, not running a pilot program.

This aggressive posture on immigration enforcement fits a broader pattern. The administration has also marked a full year of zero illegal immigrant releases at the southern border, a milestone that reflects the same willingness to use every available tool.

May 8 cases span 11 countries

On May 8, Justice Department officials announced they were seeking to denaturalize 12 naturalized American citizens. The individuals came from 11 countries: Iraq, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Somalia, The Gambia, Bolivia, Kenya, India, China, and Nigeria. The allegations in those cases involved conduct including murder, terrorism, and concealment of war crimes.

Todd Blanche told CBS News that people who became citizens through fraud or illegal means "should be worried." He described the administration's approach as "not limiting," adding that there are "a lot of individuals who are citizens who shouldn't be."

FBI Director Kash Patel reinforced that message during a March 18 appearance on Fox News Channel's "Hannity." Patel called for "stronger legislation" and "the ability to denaturalize," pointing to a case he described as the "Old Dominion attack" in which a person was "convicted and sentenced [for] terrorism" but "no one bothered to denaturalize him and remove him from the country."

That kind of enforcement gap, where the legal tools exist but go unused for years, is precisely what the current push aims to close. The administration's view is straightforward: citizenship obtained by fraud is citizenship that can and should be revoked.

The legal bar remains high

Denaturalization is not a rubber stamp. The government must prove civil cases involving claims that someone willfully lied on a naturalization application with "clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence which does not leave the issue in doubt." One source familiar with the process told Axios that denaturalization efforts have "never really taken off," explaining: "It's really hard to prove... the standard is really high, and you need good evidence."

That high evidentiary threshold is exactly why the administration's decision to embed skilled immigration attorneys inside prosecutors' offices matters. U.S. attorneys handle a vast docket. Immigration fraud cases require specialized knowledge of naturalization law, application procedures, and the specific grounds for revocation. Adding USCIS lawyers to those offices brings institutional expertise closer to the courtroom.

Whether the 385-person shortlist translates into a comparable number of filed cases remains an open question. But the trajectory is clear: 35 cases filed, 12 in a single month, and a formal DOJ memo designating denaturalization a top priority.

The administration has simultaneously moved on related fronts. On May 22, officials announced that migrants in the United States seeking to use the Adjustment of Status pathway to green cards must generally return to their home countries and apply through U.S. embassies, except in extraordinary circumstances. The change does not affect refugees, asylum seekers, or migrants living overseas. Kahler described the policy shift as returning "to the original intent of the law" and ending the practice of "incentivizing loopholes."

That same instinct, closing gaps that previous administrations left open, runs through the denaturalization effort. An appeals court recently cleared the path for the administration to resume third-country deportations, another enforcement mechanism that had languished under prior leadership.

Fraud undermines lawful immigrants most of all

Critics will frame denaturalization as an attack on immigrants. That framing inverts reality. Every fraudulent naturalization degrades the value of citizenship for the millions who obtained it lawfully. It rewards dishonesty and punishes the people who followed the rules, waited in line, and met every requirement.

The administration's willingness to fight on multiple legal fronts simultaneously, from pressing the Supreme Court on TPS protections to embedding lawyers inside prosecutors' offices, reflects a coherent enforcement philosophy rather than a scattershot approach.

Edlow's insistence on decentralization is worth noting. Rather than create a high-profile national task force that becomes a political target, the administration is weaving denaturalization into the routine work of every U.S. attorney's office. That makes the effort harder to dismantle and easier to sustain.

The broader policy agenda extends well beyond immigration. The same administration has launched new tariff investigations to replace trade levies struck down by the courts, demonstrating a pattern of adapting tactics when obstacles arise rather than retreating.

For years, denaturalization sat on a shelf, technically available, rarely used, treated as too difficult or too politically sensitive. The current administration has taken it off the shelf, staffed it up, and made it a stated priority. The legal standard remains demanding. The evidence must be clear and convincing. But the government is finally showing up to make the case.

Citizenship means something, or it means nothing. An administration willing to enforce the distinction is doing the work that others spent years avoiding.