Can Trump Deport U.S. Citizens? Denaturalization, Raids, and Rights

No, the Trump administration cannot legally deport US citizens. Deportation is an immigration tool that applies only to noncitizens, and the Fourteenth Amendment places citizenship beyond the reach of the government to revoke without consent. That constitutional answer is unchanged. What has changed is everything around it: the administration is trying to shrink who counts as a citizen at birth, dramatically expanding efforts to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans, and running enforcement operations that have repeatedly swept up citizens alongside noncitizens.

Why Citizens Cannot Be Deported

The Fourteenth Amendment declares that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens, and that no state may deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. In Afroyim v. Rusk (1967), the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that Congress has no general power to revoke American citizenship without the citizen’s consent. Justice Hugo Black’s majority opinion held that the Citizenship Clause places citizenship beyond the reach of any governmental body to destroy, whether the citizen was born here or naturalized.¹

Because citizenship cannot be involuntarily revoked, a citizen cannot be deported. No executive order, statute, or court ruling permits the removal of someone who holds valid US citizenship. The only path to deporting a current citizen is to first take away that citizenship through a legal process called denaturalization, which faces high constitutional hurdles and applies only to naturalized citizens, not people born on US soil.

Denaturalization: The Only Route, and How It’s Being Pushed

Denaturalization is a court process that undoes a naturalized person’s citizenship. Federal law allows it only in narrow circumstances: fraud during the citizenship application, concealment of material facts, or illegal procurement of citizenship. Unlike deportation, which is handled by immigration judges, denaturalization must be heard by federal judges, and the government must meet a demanding standard of proof. In civil cases, that standard is “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence,” which the Supreme Court has described as substantially identical to the criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.² There is no statute of limitations on civil denaturalization, and defendants are not entitled to government-appointed counsel.³

The Trump administration has launched an unprecedented campaign to use this tool. Between 1990 and 2017, the Justice Department averaged roughly 11 denaturalization complaints per year.⁴ During the first Trump term, that rose to about 25 per year. A June 2025 Justice Department memo directed attorneys to “aggressively prioritize” denaturalization, and internal guidance sent to US Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices in December 2025 set quotas of 100 to 200 case referrals per month.⁵ Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche described the approach as “zero tolerance” for abuse of the naturalization process. As of April 2026, the administration had identified 384 potential cases and filed charges against at least 39 individuals, with a stated goal of reaching 250 cases by October 2026.⁶

Former DOJ attorneys report that the administration has shifted from the traditional practice of pursuing only the most serious cases to a mandate to pursue anyone potentially eligible, including people with minor paperwork errors or immaterial discrepancies in their applications.³ An August 2025 USCIS policy memo also raised the bar for proving “good moral character” during naturalization.⁶ President Trump has publicly signaled willingness to use denaturalization against political figures, posting on Truth Social around Thanksgiving 2025 that he would “denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility” and repeatedly suggesting openness to pursuing denaturalization against Rep. Ilhan Omar and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.⁷

Legal Limits Courts Have Already Set

Supreme Court precedent has treated denaturalization as a tool of last resort. In Schneiderman v. United States (1943), the Court set a “heavy burden” on the government specifically to prevent citizenship from being wielded as a political weapon. Afroyim affirmed that naturalized citizens stand on equal legal footing with the native-born. And in Maslenjak v. United States (2017), the Court confirmed that for criminal denaturalization, a false statement must have had an actual causal connection to the person obtaining citizenship.² These precedents make any campaign to denaturalize people for political speech or minor discrepancies legally vulnerable, though the process itself can impose real financial costs on defendants who must hire their own attorneys.

Legislation That Would Expand Grounds

The Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation (SCAM) Act, introduced in January 2026 by House Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Senator Eric Schmitt, would expand denaturalization grounds to cover individuals who, within ten years of naturalization, are convicted of fraud against the government exceeding $10,000, affiliate with a foreign terrorist organization, or commit an aggravated felony or espionage offense. The bill would make denaturalization retroactive to the date the citizenship certificate was issued.⁸⁹

The Birthright Citizenship Challenge

On his first day in office in January 2025, President Trump issued an executive order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” directing federal agencies to stop recognizing US citizenship for children born after February 19, 2025, to parents who were both unlawfully present or whose mother was on a temporary visa and whose father was not a citizen or permanent resident.¹⁰ The order estimated that roughly 255,000 children born annually in the United States would be affected.²

The ACLU and allied organizations challenged the order in a nationwide class-action lawsuit, Barbara v. Donald J. Trump, arguing it directly contradicts the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born … in the United States … are citizens.” Federal courts blocked enforcement, and a preliminary injunction remains in effect. Oral arguments at the Supreme Court concluded on April 1, 2026, with a decision expected by mid-2026.¹¹ If upheld, the order would create a class of people born on American soil who are not recognized as citizens and could theoretically be treated as deportable, a scenario without precedent in modern American law.

Citizens Detained in Immigration Raids

Even without formally revoking anyone’s citizenship, the administration’s enforcement campaign has swept up US citizens in significant numbers. A ProPublica investigation published in October 2025 identified more than 170 instances in the first nine months of the administration where US citizens were detained by immigration agents.¹² More than 50 of those citizens were detained after agents questioned their citizenship, and the vast majority were Latino. Over 20 citizens were held for more than 24 hours without access to a lawyer or the ability to contact family. Nearly 20 children were among those detained, including two with cancer.

A subsequent congressional investigation by Senate Democrats documented cases in which citizens reported being dragged from vehicles, detained for multiple days, denied medical care, and subjected to fabricated assault allegations by officers. One Idaho citizen, Anabel Romero, told investigators that agents pointed guns at her young children and that an agent threatened to “blow your head off.”¹³ The government does not track how many citizens have been wrongfully detained.¹⁴

The Department of Homeland Security has denied the pattern. Secretary Kristi Noem stated in November 2025, “No American citizens have been arrested or detained.” In multiple cases, however, citizens have been held for days without charges. In nearly 50 of the roughly 130 cases where citizens were arrested for allegedly assaulting or interfering with officers, charges were never filed or were dropped.¹²

One Case: A Citizen Veteran Held for Three Days

George Retes, a 26-year-old US citizen and Iraq War veteran, was arrested on July 10, 2025, near a farm in Ventura County, California, during an ICE raid. According to his lawsuit, agents shattered his car window, pulled him from his vehicle, and held him for three days at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles without charges, without access to an attorney, and without explanation. He was placed in an isolation cell on suicide watch on his second day and eventually released without ever being charged.¹⁵ After Retes publicly wrote about the experience, DHS claimed on social media that he had been arrested for “assaulting law enforcement,” an allegation his attorneys say is contradicted by video footage.¹⁶ His case, Retes v. United States, was filed in February 2026. His attorneys at the Institute for Justice expect the litigation to be a “years-long fight.”¹⁷

Deportations That Ignored Court Orders

These cases involve legal residents, not citizens, but they matter for the same reason: they show what happens when enforcement runs ahead of the law. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native and Maryland resident with a protected legal status, was deported to El Salvador’s CECOT high-security prison on March 15, 2025, despite a 2019 court order barring his removal to that country. The government called it an “administrative error.”¹⁸ In April 2025, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that his removal was illegal and that the government must facilitate his return.¹⁹

NPR identified multiple similar cases. Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, a 31-year-old Salvadoran, was deported on May 7, 2025, roughly 30 minutes after a court ordered the government to keep him in the country; the Second Circuit later ordered his return.²⁰ Federico Reyes Vasquez was deported to Mexico in December 2025 despite a Utah federal judge issuing a stay of removal.²¹ In multiple instances, the government admitted in court that removals violated active court orders because those orders were not communicated to the agents carrying out the deportations.

One related effect reaches citizens directly. Members of Congress have reported that ICE has deported US citizen children alongside undocumented parents, sometimes against the families’ wishes.¹⁴ An estimated 4.4 million US-citizen children live with at least one undocumented parent.²²

What Citizens Can Do If Detained

Every person in the United States, regardless of status, has the right to remain silent, the right to refuse consent to a search without a warrant, and the right to consult a lawyer. US citizens are not legally required to carry proof of citizenship. If agents come to your home, they need a judicial warrant signed by a judge to enter; an ICE administrative form does not qualify.²³ The constitutional standard holds that the government presumptively cannot hold anyone for more than two days without a probable-cause hearing before a judge.

Legal recourse after a wrongful detention is available but slow. The Federal Tort Claims Act allows lawsuits for false arrest, but requires you to first submit a claim to the federal agency involved and wait up to six months for a response before filing suit.¹⁵ Constitutional claims against individual federal officers face additional hurdles, including qualified immunity. George Retes has advocated before Congress for amending Section 1983 to provide a clearer legal avenue for citizens to sue federal officers for constitutional violations.²⁴

The formal legal answer holds. The Fourteenth Amendment, Afroyim, and basic due process protections prohibit deporting a US citizen. What the record from 2025 and 2026 shows is that the guardrails are being tested at every seam: through denaturalization filings on a scale not seen in modern history, an executive order that would narrow birthright citizenship, and enforcement operations that have detained citizens by the dozen and, in the case of citizen children of noncitizen parents, effectively removed them from the country. The protection is real. Knowing the limits of that protection, and the rights that go with it, is what matters if agents ever knock.

1
Oyez. Afroyim v. Rusk
2
Brennan Center for Justice. Stripping Naturalized Americans of Citizenship Faces High Legal Hurdles
3
NPR. Trump DOJ Citizenship Denaturalization Revoke Legal Protections
4
CBS News. Denaturalization: U.S. Citizens, Fraud, Crimes, Trump Administration
5
New York Times. Trump Immigration Citizenship Denaturalization
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Migration Policy Institute. Trump Denaturalization Strip Citizenship
7
Brennan Center for Justice. Trump’s Push to Redefine Who Counts as American
8
Office of Rep. Tom Emmer. Whip Emmer Introduces SCAM Act
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Office of Sen. Eric Schmitt. Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation Act
10
White House. Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship
11
ACLU. Barbara v. Donald J. Trump
12
ProPublica. Immigration DHS American Citizens Arrested Detained Against Will
13
ProPublica. Immigration Agents Detained Mistreated Citizens Congressional Investigation
14
Office of Rep. Dan Goldman. Goldman, Warren, Padilla, Kelly, and Correa Demand Investigations of ICE’s Detention
15
Institute for Justice. Arrested by ICE and Held for Three Days Without Communication or a Hearing, Citizen and Veteran Sues Feds
16
Institute for Justice. George Retes Federal Officer Accountability
17
The Guardian. Army Veteran Detained Sues Federal Government
18
ABC News. Timeline: Wrongful Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador
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NBC News. Kilmar Abrego Garcia Was Mistakenly Deported to El Salvador
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Politico. Court Orders Trump Return Deported Immigrant
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NPR. Trump, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Immigration Mistaken Deportations
22
American Immigration Council. U.S. Citizen Children Impacted by Immigration Enforcement
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ACLU. Know Your Rights: Immigrants’ Rights
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Reason. Why This U.S. Citizen Was Arrested and Jailed During an ICE Raid