Right-wing media figures are escalating a long-running campaign to give the president vast powers to denaturalize and deport naturalized citizens, a generally rare occurrence that would represent a significant new front in President Donald Trump’s campaign to restrict immigration and limit citizenship in the United States.

On March 19, Article III Project founder and MAGA media influencer Mike Davis told Axios: “What's going to be on the horizon are denaturalization cases.”

“You're going to have Hamas supporters who have been naturalized within the last 10 years, and they are eligible to lose their status as citizens and get deported,” he added. “It's worth it."

The article reported that Trump’s campaign to restrict immigration through the Supreme Court is being “spearheaded” by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy.

Naturalized U.S. citizens are people born outside of the United States who have gone through a lengthy process to secure the rights and privileges of somebody born in the country. Since the end of the Cold War it has been unusual for the U.S. to denaturalize citizens, with only about 11 instances per year between 1990 and 2017, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

In recent years, conservative pundits and think tanks have sought to drastically increase those numbers. MAGA media figures have targeted pro-Palestinian organizers, a high-profile journalist, and, in at least one instance, a sitting member of Congress in their campaigns to denaturalize citizens, which are frequently directed at people who are (or are perceived to be) Muslim. These threats are extreme, even by right-wing media standards — and where MAGA punditry often falls light on specifics, white papers from conservative think tanks look to offer a veneer of policy respectability to the calls for ramping up denaturalization.

Trump 2.0 looks to “turbocharge” Trump 1.0 denaturalization initiatives

The first Trump administration attempted to bring 1,600 either civil or criminal denaturalization cases — though it fell far short, with one estimate putting the number of cases brought at 168. The second Trump administration is attempting to revive those efforts, in part by including the section of the U.S. Code that controls revoking citizenship in one of the administration’s Day 1 executive orders.

Less cryptically, Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in 2023, “We started a new denaturalization project under Trump. In 2025, expect it to be turbocharged.”

Miller was responding to MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec, who had written, “We used to strip foreign-born anarchists and communists of citizenship and deport them. Laws still on the books. Just planting seeds.” Now, those seeds appear to be taking root.

MAGA media goes all in on denaturalization

The Article III Project’s Mike Davis is perhaps the loudest voice in MAGA media pushing for Trump to ramp up denaturalization efforts, which he frequently directs at pro-Palestinian activists. The calls for denaturalization are part of a larger right-wing media campaign to smear pro-Palestinian protests, Palestinians being considered for refugee relocation, and Palestinian activists like Mahmoud Khalil — a green card holder arrested and detained by ICE.

• On October 22, 2023, Davis wrote on X that he was “calling for the denaturalization of naturalized American citizens who support Hamas.” He continued: “For those naturalized within the last 5 years, their current support of Hamas is prima facie evidence they lied on their citizenship applications.” [Twitter/X, 10/22/23]
• Barely a week later, Davis appeared on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle and promised, “When President Trump is back in office, he’s going to revoke all these visas of these Hamas supporters and I think he’s going to resume the denaturalization process for naturalized American citizens who lied on their applications for citizenship and support the terrorism.” Host Laura Ingraham earlier praised the “wisdom” in Trump’s Muslim Ban, to which Davis added, “Maybe it’s not such a good idea to import people from Third World, Marxist hellholes who hate America and everything we stand for.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/30/23]
• The next month, Davis wrote that journalist Mehdi Hasan was “on my Lists 2 (indict), 4 (detain), 6 (denaturalize), and 3 (deport). I already have his spot picked out in the DC gulag.” Davis’ added: “But I’ll put him in the women’s cell block.” Hasan is a naturalized U.S. citizen who also holds U.K. citizenship. [Twitter/X, 11/20/23, 10/9/20]
• In January 2024, Davis appeared on a Rumble streaming show and said one of Article III Project’s aims was to “push to have these Hamas supporters, their visas revoked, they’re thrown out of our country — if they’re naturalized citizens, having them denaturalized and get them the hell out of America.” He continued: “They’re trash and they need to get the hell out of America because they don’t share our Judeo-Christian values. And if you cheer on terrorists, then you’re a terrorist — you’re a terrorist supporter.” [Rumble, The Yossi Schmidt Show, 1/16/24]
• In March 2024, Davis responded to a video posted on X of a Palestinian woman confronting Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) by writing, “We must revoke visas, denaturalize citizens, and deport Hamas supporters.” Davis also denied the existence of Palestinian national identity, a common and racist anti-Palestinian trope. [Twitter/X, 3/3/24; The Palestine Chronicle, 3/29/23]
• Days later, Davis again reacted to a video of a pro-Palestinian demonstration by writing: “Revoke their visas. Denaturalize them. Send. Them. Home.” [Twitter/X, 3/6/24]

Although Davis may be the loudest advocate for denaturalizing citizens, he’s far from alone in MAGA media.

• Davis’ Article III Project colleague Will Chamberlain also called for Mehdi Hasan to be denaturalized and deported. On March 15, Hasan wrote on X: “Abolish ICE.” Chamberlain responded: “Denaturalize and deport Mehdi Hasan.” In a follow-up post four days later, he wrote: “Update: I have created a March Madness bracket to celebrate Mehdi’s imminent deportation. Winner gets to personally escort Mehdi to his repatriation flight.” Chamberlain also threatened to deport Derek Guy, a popular commentator on men’s fashion, writing, “Don’t worry, we’ll get around to you as well. I hear tailoring is a thriving industry in Vietnam.” [Twitter/X, 3/15/25, 3/19/25, 3/16/25]
• Steve Bannon’s War Room co-host Natalie Winters and guest Theo Wold, who served as deputy assistant for domestic policy in the first Trump administration, both agreed that increased denaturalizations were necessary if Trump regained the presidency. “There’s a lot of discussion of mass deportations and the feasibility of that — I think it’s fair to say we're at a point where you almost need denaturalizations too,” Winters said. “Is that something that is legally plausible? Is that something that could be pursued in a second Trump administration?” Wold clarified that “denaturalization works on a case-by-case or individual basis,” adding, “Our country has been replete with instances where people engage in falsifying relationships in order to obtain green cards or eventually get citizenship under false pretenses.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 8/13/24]
• The next month, Winters escalated her rhetoric: “It’s not just mass deportations, it’s mass denaturalizations — I think that’s an important component, the other side of the coin, which is feasible and legally doable.” Her comments came during an interview with Davis, who nodded along and smiled. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 9/21/24]
• In the midst of a manufactured right-wing media scandal built on a mistranslation of a speech given by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk made what he called “the case to denaturalize and deport Ilhan Omar.” He added, “It’s important to ask the question: How do we prevent more Ilhan Omars from coming into the country, from representing us in our government and potentially being an insurgent?” He ended his presentation by calling Omar “a perfect embodiment of the ingratitude of now the Third World, foreigner, left-wing insurgency within the United States Congress,” concluding that “she speaks like a sleeper cell. … She should be denaturalized, and she should be deported back to where she came from.” [Media Matters, 1/31/24; Salem Media Group, The Charlie Kirk Show, 1/31/24, 1/31/24]

MAGA media rely on bombast and maximalist threats to drive attention, but they aren’t the only actors in the right-wing media and policy ecosystem making demands for denaturalization. Their commentary is complimented by the work of conservative think tanks, which attempt to provide an air of sophistication to support the Trump administration’s policies.

Project 2025 offers anodyne-sounding policy to support discriminatory denaturalization efforts

One of the most influential forces behind the Trump 2024 campaign and now second term is Project 2025, a sprawling and unpopular effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide policy and staffing options in the event that the former president retook the White House. Over 100 conservative groups sat on Project 2025’s advisory board including nativist think tank the Center for Immigration Studies, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group. (The Axios article that quoted Davis also quoted an attorney from CIS, highlighting the group’s central role in the right’s effort to restrict immigration and push for increased rates of denaturalization.)

• Project 2025’s almost 900-page policy book, Mandate for Leadership, calls for the “reimplementation of the USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] denaturalization unit—an effort to maintain integrity in the system by identifying and prosecuting criminal and civil denaturalization cases, in combination with the Department of Justice, for aliens who obtained citizenship through fraud or other illicit means.” Mandate’s denaturalization prescription was just one element of Project 2025’s radically anti-immigrant agenda. [Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, accessed 3/20/25; Media Matters, 3/20/24]
• In 2018, Project 2025 partner the Center for Immigration Studies published an article headlined: “Denaturalization and Gang Membership.” The piece discussed a bill proposed by then-Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), now Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, that would use immigration law against “naturalized individuals who are, or were, gang members, associates, or affiliates, or who provide material support to such gangs,” to “have their citizenship revoked through denaturalization.” Although CIS’ argument may have seemed narrow, the Trump administration’s decision to extraordinarily render 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador on grounds of gang membership — despite contradictory U.S. intelligence assessments — shows how the authority endorsed by Zeldin and CIS can be used for far broader ends. [Center for Immigration Studies, 3/7/18; CBS News, 3/20/25; The New York Times, 3/20/25]
• In 2021, CIS published an article headlined: “DHS to Let Immigration Cheats Keep U.S. Citizenship” which argued a proposed Biden-era policy “imposes such onerous restrictions that it has the practical effect of ending civil denaturalization.” The article concluded that “immigration cheats … are surely cheering on Secretary Mayorkas to sign the memo.” Despite the characterization by CIS, civil denaturalization is often a discriminatory tool wielded against vulnerable populations. A study from the Open Society Justice Initiative found that over the first two years of the first Trump administration, the Department of Justice had filed “nearly three times as many civil denaturalizations” as “the average … over the previous eight administrations.” An analysis of the study by Asian-Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus added “that 49% of all civil denaturalization cases filed targeted citizens whose country of origin is a ‘special interest country’–a label often used as a proxy for Muslim-majority countries or countries with significant Muslim populations–which includes India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.” [Center for Immigration Studies, 10/14/21; Open Society Justice Initiative, 2019; House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, 3/1/22]

Denaturalization as a tool for political oppression

The premise underlying the right’s anti-immigration arguments — sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit — is that certain categories of people don’t have fundamental civil rights and their entire life is contingent on the whims of an increasingly fascistic federal government. These efforts are about reproducing a social hierarchy where some individuals are protected less than others in the eyes of the law based on their religion, national origins, or political beliefs.

Now, as right-wing media and their allies in the Trump administration wage an all-out campaign against immigrants — both inside the United States and at border crossings, directed at those with and without legal authorization to live in the country — their attacks targeting naturalized citizens are poised to open the latest front in that war.