Can You Lose Your Citizenship if You Commit a Crime?

You can lose your U.S. citizenship if you commit a crime, but only in a narrow set of situations. For someone born in the United States, the risk is limited to a handful of offenses against the country itself, and even then the government has to prove you meant to give up your citizenship. For someone who became a citizen through naturalization, the bigger exposure isn’t the crime itself but any fraud or concealment during the naturalization process. Ordinary criminal convictions, however serious, do not strip citizenship.

If You Were Born a U.S. Citizen

The Supreme Court held in Afroyim v. Rusk that Congress cannot revoke American citizenship without the citizen’s consent, a protection anchored in the Fourteenth Amendment.¹ For birth citizens, that protection is close to absolute. The government cannot take your citizenship as punishment for a crime, no matter how serious the conviction.

There is one narrow path. Federal law lists “expatriating acts” that can cause any citizen to lose nationality, and a few of them are criminal: committing treason, attempting to overthrow the U.S. government by force, bearing arms against the United States, or engaging in seditious conspiracy.² A conviction for any of these can, in theory, trigger loss of nationality.

In practice it almost never does. The Supreme Court held in Vance v. Terrazas that the government must prove two separate things: that you voluntarily committed the act, and that you intended to relinquish your U.S. citizenship when you did it. The act itself is not treated as automatic proof of that intent. So someone convicted of seditious conspiracy who never said or did anything to signal they wanted to stop being American would almost certainly keep their citizenship. The intent requirement is a bar the government rarely clears.

If You Became a Citizen Through Naturalization

Naturalized citizens have the same constitutional shield against involuntary revocation, but they face a distinct risk called denaturalization. Denaturalization does not revoke a valid citizenship. Instead, a court declares that the naturalization should never have happened because the person got it through fraud or was legally ineligible. That distinction is why denaturalization survives after Afroyim, which itself noted that citizenship “unlawfully procured” can be set aside.³

Fraud and Concealment During the Application

This is the most common ground. Federal law allows denaturalization when citizenship was “illegally procured” or obtained through “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.”⁴ Typical examples include hiding a criminal history, lying about a marriage that supported a green card, or failing to disclose membership in a terrorist or totalitarian organization. The Department of Justice has denaturalized people who concealed connections to al-Qaeda, committed war crimes abroad, perpetrated sex offenses, and ran immigration fraud schemes.⁵

Not every falsehood counts. In Kungys v. United States, the Supreme Court held that a misrepresentation must be “material,” meaning it was predictably capable of affecting the government’s decision.⁶ A wrong date on a form by a few days won’t do it. Lying about an arrest, or concealing a prior deportation order, almost certainly will.

Conduct After You Naturalize

A few post-naturalization acts are treated as evidence that the citizenship was tainted from the start:

Joining or affiliating with an organization that would have disqualified you from naturalizing (such as a totalitarian party or terrorist group) within five years of becoming a citizen.⁴
Refusing to testify before a congressional committee about subversive activities within ten years of naturalizing, if you are convicted of contempt for that refusal.⁴
Being separated from the military under other-than-honorable conditions before completing five years of honorable service, if you gained citizenship through that service.⁷

How the Government Brings a Case

There are two paths, and they operate on very different terms.

Most denaturalizations are civil lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice in federal district court. The government has to meet a heightened standard, proving its case by “clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence.” That is stricter than the ordinary civil standard and reflects how serious the loss of citizenship is. Civil denaturalization has no statute of limitations, so a case can be filed decades after someone naturalized.⁵

When the fraud is serious enough, prosecutors can charge a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1425 for knowingly procuring naturalization unlawfully. The penalties run up to 10 years in prison for a standard offense, up to 20 years if the fraud facilitated drug trafficking, and up to 25 years if it facilitated international terrorism.⁸ The government has to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.⁹ A conviction under this statute triggers automatic revocation: the sentencing court must void the naturalization order and cancel the certificate in the same proceeding.⁴ Criminal cases carry a ten-year statute of limitations.

What Losing Citizenship Actually Costs You

Once a court cancels a Certificate of Naturalization, every right that came with citizenship goes with it: the right to vote, the ability to hold a U.S. passport, eligibility for federal benefits that require citizenship, and protection from deportation.⁴ You revert to whatever immigration status you held before naturalizing.

That prior status often doesn’t save you. If the same fraud tainted the green card that came before the naturalization, say a sham marriage that produced permanent residency and then citizenship, you may have no lawful status left at all. At that point removal proceedings can follow.

Your Spouse and Children

Family members who got their own citizenship through the person being denaturalized can lose theirs too, and the reason for revocation controls the outcome. If citizenship was revoked because it was “illegally procured” without fraud, derivative family members keep their status. If the basis was fraud or willful misrepresentation, the spouse and children who derived citizenship through that person lose it as well, whether they live in the United States or abroad.⁷ They revert to whatever immigration status they held before. A spouse or child who knew nothing about the fraud can still be swept in.

An Unexpected Tax Bill

The IRS treats the cancellation of a naturalization certificate as one of the triggering dates for expatriation tax rules.¹⁰ If you meet any of three tests (net worth of $2 million or more, average annual net income tax liability for the prior five years above roughly $211,000 adjusted for inflation in 2026, or failure to certify full tax compliance on Form 8854), the IRS classifies you as a “covered expatriate.” Covered expatriates face a mark-to-market exit tax that treats most worldwide assets as if sold the day before expatriation. The bill can be substantial even though the loss of citizenship was not voluntary.

1
Oyez. Afroyim v. Rusk
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1481 – Loss of Nationality by Native-Born or Naturalized Citizen
3
Justia Law. Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1451 – Revocation of Naturalization
5
United States Department of Justice. The Department of Justice Creates Section Dedicated to Denaturalization Cases
6
Justia Law. Kungys v. United States, 485 U.S. 759
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Effects of Revocation of Naturalization
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1425 – Procurement of Citizenship or Naturalization Unlawfully
9
USCIS. Purpose and Background
10
Internal Revenue Service. Expatriation Tax